When Safety Starts With Understanding: How We Approach Risk Assessment and Safety Planning
Safety isn’t a single moment for a survivor of domestic or intimate partner violence. It’s a series of decisions made under pressure, often while navigating fear, uncertainty, and constant unpredictability.
That’s why risk assessment and safety planning sit at the core of our intervention. They help us understand the threats a survivor is facing and help the survivor understand their own choices, strengths, and next steps.
This work isn’t about telling someone what to do. It’s about walking with them, listening closely, and building a plan that protects them without taking away their autonomy.
Understanding Risk, Together
Every survivor’s situation is different, and so the first step is always to listen. We work with survivors to identify potential sources of harm, patterns in the abusive partner’s behaviour, access to weapons, concerns around children’s safety, or danger in their immediate living environment.
Risk today also includes digital harm. We check whether the abuser might be monitoring devices, tracking phones, or using social media to intimidate or harass.
Just as important is understanding how the survivor is feeling: trauma symptoms, fear, exhaustion, hopelessness, or suicidal thoughts. These emotional cues tell us as much about risk as any external factor.
By bringing all this together, we co-create a clear picture of the situation.Not to overwhelm the survivor, but to make sure nothing important is missed.
Building a Safety Plan That Fits Their Life
A safety plan only works when it’s practical, something the survivor feels ready to use, not something imposed on them.
Together, we map out steps such as:
⦁ Preparing a safety bag with essential documents, medicines, keys, and important items in case they need to leave quickly.
⦁ Identifying safer areas inside the home, where there are exits or fewer objects that could be used to cause harm.
⦁ Creating code words for danger, simple phrases survivors can use with us or with trusted friends and family when they need immediate help.
⦁ Securing digital devices, changing passwords, adjusting privacy settings, and reducing the abuser’s access to information.
⦁ Navigating social media safely, including what to avoid posting and how to limit visibility.
These steps may look simple from the outside, but for a survivor, they offer a sense of preparedness, a way to reclaim some control in a situation designed to take it away.
Strength in Support Systems
Safety rarely happens alone. A strong support network can make the difference between feeling trapped and feeling held.
We help survivors think through who they can trust: friends, neighbours, colleagues, extended family. We also guide them on when and how to access services like police support, emergency transport, and helplines.
The goal isn’t to push any particular option.It’s to make sure that when a crisis comes or even a moment of doubt, they know where to turn.
A Strength-Based Approach to Safety
Survivors often believe they are “weak” because of what they’ve endured. But the truth is the opposite. Most have been assessing risk and making protective decisions long before they reached us.
Our role is to highlight those strengths, not replace them.
We work from a strength-based approach, helping survivors recognise their own skills, instincts, and courage. When they understand the risks and the possible consequences of each choice, they’re better equipped to make decisions that protect themselves and their children.
And that is the essence of safety planning: not fear, not urgency, but clarity.
Moving Toward Safety, One Step at a Time
Risk assessment and safety planning may sound technical, but at their heart, they are deeply human processes. They’re about listening, trusting, supporting and helping someone navigate danger with as much safety and dignity as possible.
Every survivor’s path looks different. But each one deserves a plan that respects them, strengthens them, and moves at their pace.
This is how safety begins: with understanding, with partnership, and with the quiet, steady belief that every survivor deserves to live free from harm.