My Safety Kit

Insight Exchange (DVSM) · Reflection resource (booklet + animations + decision-making tool) · Free

Summary

My Safety Kit is a reflection resource from Insight Exchange for people who are, or may be, experiencing domestic, family and sexualised violence. Rather than triggering an alarm, it supports a person “at their pace, at their lead” with information and reflection questions about how they see their situation and what they might be weighing as they look ahead. It includes a decision-making tool and reflection questions across areas of wellbeing — material basics / economic wellbeing, love and connection, participation, learning, physical and mental health, and safety — and is available as a booklet (including a My Safety Kit Aotearoa edition) with short introductory animations.

It is accompanied by de-identified lived-experience insights (e.g. “Sam” and “Alex”) that map real experiences against the kit’s focus areas, illustrating what a person may be doing — or not doing — to stay safe and well within their relationship.

Connections

Produced byInsight Exchange
Informed byTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
SupportsRisk Assessment
- Self-directed reflection rather than an actuarial checklist.
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence
AddressesEconomic Abuse

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/my-safety-kit/

Tags: #resource #reflection #lived-experience

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economic-abuse

Economic Abuse

Economic abuse (often called financial abuse) is the control of a partner’s or ex-partner’s money, resources and the things money can buy, in order to limit their independence and trap them in the relationship. It includes restricting access to bank accounts and income, sabotaging employment or education, running up coerced debt in the victim’s name, and controlling access to transport, technology, housing and daily essentials. It is a core tactic of Coercive Control: by stripping away the material means of leaving, an abuser makes escape practically impossible. Survivors frequently cite financial insecurity as a primary reason for staying with — or returning to — an abusive partner, and the damage (ruined credit, employment gaps, debt) persists long after the relationship ends.

Economic abuse is a pervasive but widely under-recognised form of Gender-Based Violence. The US National Network to End Domestic Violence reports that financial abuse occurs in an estimated 99% of domestic violence cases, making it nearly universal in abusive relationships, yet it is poorly understood by the public. In the UK, charity Surviving Economic Abuse estimates that roughly 1 in 6 women has experienced economic abuse by a current or former partner. Because so much of modern financial life and account access runs through phones and shared logins, economic abuse increasingly intersects with Tech-Enabled Abuse; survivor-centred resources such as My Safety Kit are built to help victim-survivors document and counter it.

In this vault

Subtype ofGender-Based Violence
Instance ofCoercive Control
Addressed byMy Safety Kit
Related toTech-Enabled Abuse

Sources

https://nnedv.org/content/about-financial-abuse/
https://survivingeconomicabuse.org/what-is-economic-abuse/

Tags: #concept #violence

domestic-family-and-sexualised-violence

Domestic Family and Sexualised Violence

Domestic, family and sexualised violence (DFSV) is the framing used across Australia — and by Insight Exchange — to name the spectrum of violence and abuse occurring within intimate, family and domestic relationships, including its sexualised dimensions. It maps onto Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence while deliberately keeping family relationships and lived experience in view.

In this vault

Subtype ofGender-Based Violence
CentresVictim-Survivor

risk-assessment

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment in the Domestic Violence field is the structured attempt to estimate a victim’s danger — especially of serious or lethal harm — so that advocates, police, and courts can prioritise resources. The best-known instruments emerged in 1990s North America. Jacquelyn Campbell’s Danger Assessment was built specifically to predict intimate partner homicide, weighting factors such as escalating violence, threats with a weapon, strangulation, and an abuser’s access to firearms. The DASH (Domestic Abuse, Stalking and Honour-based violence) checklist is used by UK police as a frontline screening tool, while the ODARA (Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Actuarial) predicts the likelihood and severity of future assault by a known male offender. These tools correlate with one another but measure different things — recidivism is not lethality, and ODARA’s developers caution it was not built to predict homicide.

The literature is candid about limits. Most validation has been done by the tools’ own developers, on relatively small, mostly-white samples; a high-profile study (“Dashing Hopes?”) found that police DASH judgements predicted future harm only weakly. For this vault the relevance is that risk assessment is increasingly embedded in Personal Safety Apps and AI Distress Detection, where an actuarial logic gets automated and detached from the advocate’s judgement it was meant to support. Done well it can centre a Victim-Survivor’s safety planning; done badly it lends a false numerical authority to decisions about Intimate Partner Violence.

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Tags: #concept #risk-assessment #lethality

victim-survivor

Victim-Survivor

Victim-survivor is the term used in much lived-experience-led practice (including Insight Exchange’s) for a person who has been subjected to violence and abuse. It deliberately holds both realities at once — the harm done to a person and their ongoing agency — and signals a stance of centring that person’s own meaning, pace and decisions, as in Trauma-Informed Design and Survivor-Centered Design.

In this vault

Related toTrauma-Informed Design
Subjected toGender-Based Violence

trauma-informed-design

Trauma-Informed Design

Trauma-informed design builds tools around the realities of people who have experienced violence: defaults that fail safe, control left in the user’s hands, language that validates rather than directs, and the assumption that a device may be monitored. It is closely tied to Survivor-Centered Design and underpins discreet, dignified experiences. Insight Exchange’s resources — My Safety Kit, Responders Lab, No Hidden Door — are practical expressions of the approach.

In this vault

insight-exchange

Insight Exchange

Domestic Violence Service Management (DVSM) · Australia · Registered charity (ABN 26 165 400 635)

Summary

Insight Exchange is an Australian initiative established, developed and governed by Domestic Violence Service Management (DVSM). Rather than an app, it is a body of lived-experience-led resources that centre the dignity and agency of people subjected to domestic, family and sexualised violence — and that support the people and institutions around them to respond well. Its material is organised around Listening, Exploring, Responding, Learning and Participating, and is published in multiple languages (including Spanish and Arabic).

Its design philosophy is a useful counterpoint to the “panic button” model of safety tech: instead of a device that summons help in a crisis, Insight Exchange produces reflective resources (e.g. My Safety Kit), practice programs for responders (e.g. Responders Lab), and communication-ecosystem audits (e.g. No Hidden Door) grounded in what victim-survivors say keeps them safe and well.

Connections

Informed byTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence
ProducesMy Safety Kit
ProducesResponders Lab
ProducesNo Hidden Door

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/

Tags: #org #australia #lived-experience

My Safety Kit

Summary

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