Safety At Home
Develop a safety plan and discuss it with your children. Review the plan as often as possible. Change the locks and install devices to secure your windows. Make sure your children’s school, bus driver, day-care center, or camp know who is authorized to pick up your children. Tell your neighbors and landlord that your abuser no longer lives there and ask them to call the police if they see him or her near your home. Before you resume a potentially abusive relationship, discuss alternatives with someone you trust.

Safety On the Job and In Public
You must decide if and when you will tell others that you have been in danger and that you may be at continued risk. Friends, family and co-workers can help to protect you. Consider carefully which people to speak to and ask for help and increased safety.
If you have an order of protection or a restraining order, keep it with you at all times. Inform building security and coworkers you trust of your situation. If possible, provide a photograph of your abuser to building security. Vary your routes to and from work and arrange for someone to escort you to your car, bus, or train. Plan what to do in various situations if the abuser confronts you.

Safety During Volatile Domestic Violence Incident
If an argument seems unavoidable, move to a room or area with easy access to an exit - not a bathroom, kitchen, or anywhere near weapons. Identify which door, window, stairwell or elevator offers the quickest way out of the home - and practice your route. Have a bag packed and ready. Keep it in an undisclosed but accessible place where you can retrieve it quickly. Find neighbors you can tell about the violence and ask that they call the police if they hear a disturbance. Devise a code word to use with your children, family, and friends when you need the police. Decide where you will go if you have to leave, even if you do not think it will come to that. Use your instincts and judgement. Consider giving the abuser what he or she wants to defuse a dangerous situation. You have a right to protect yourself when you are in danger. You do not deserve to be battered or threatened.

Safety When Preparing To Leave
If you are need to leave a violent or abusive relationship, develop a careful plan in order to increase safety. Batterers often strike back when they believe that a battered woman is leaving the relationship.

Safety with an Order of Protection
Many victims obey protection orders, but one can never be sure which violent partner will obey and which will violate protection orders. You may need to ask the police and the court to enforce your protection order.

Safety and Drug or Alcohol Use
Most people in this culture use alcohol. Many use mood-altering drugs. Much of this use is legal and some is not. The legal outcomes of using illegal drugs can be very hard on a victim of violence or abuse, may hurt their relationship with their children and put them at a disadvantage in other legal actions with the abusive partner. Therefore, you should carefully consider the potential cost of the use of illegal drugs. But beyond this, the use of any alcohol or other drug can reduce your awareness and ability to act quickly to protect yourself from your abuser. Furthermore, the use of alcohol or other drugs by the abuser may give him/her an excuse to use violence. Therefore, in the context of drug or alcohol use, a specific safety plans should be made.

Safety and My Emotional Health
The experience of being assaulted and verbally degraded by partners is usually exhausting and emotionally draining. The process of building a new life for yourself takes much courage and incredible energy. Use professional and personal resources to help you through this difficult time. You are not alone. Consider joining a support group or other activities which will help you find others who understand what you are going through and support you. Your local domestic violence agency can help your access the help you need.

Items To Take When Leaving
When women leave partners, it is important to take certain items with them. Beyond this, women sometimes give an extra copy of papers and an extra set of clothing to a friend just in case they have to leave quickly.

Money: Even if a woman has never worked, she may be entitled to the funds in the checking and savings accounts. If she doesn't take any money from the accounts, he can legally take all money and/or close the account and she may not get my share until the court rules on it if ever.

Items in bold on the following list are the most important to take. If there is time, the other items might be taken, or stored outside the home. These items might be placed in one location, so that if you have to leave in a hurry, you can grab them quickly.

When you leave, you should have:

• Identification for myself
  
• Children's birth certificate
  
• My birth certificate
  
• Social security cards
  
• School and vaccination records
  
• Money
  
• Checkbook, ATM (Automatic Tellers Machine) card, Credit cards
  
• Keys - house/car/office
  
• Driver's license and registration
  
• Medication
  
• Welfare identification, work permits, Green Card, Passport, divorce papers
  
• Medical records - for all family members
  
• Lease/rental agreement, house deed, mortgage payment book
  
• Bank books, Insurance papers
  
• Small saleable objects
  
• Address book, pictures, jewelry
  
• Children's favorite toys and/or blankets
  
• Items of special sentimental value