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When You’re Ready to Leave / Safety Planning

Safety Planning Guidelines

These safety suggestions have been compiled from safety plans distributed by State Domestic Violence Coalitions from across the country. Following these suggestions is not a guarantee of safety, but could help to improve your safety situation. A printable Safety Plan Checklist is available for reference here. If you are living with an abuser, please also see Personal Safety with an Abuser.

Getting Ready to Leave

• Keep evidence of physical abuse, such as pictures. Keep a journal of all violent incidences, noting dates, events and threats made, if possible. If you are injured, go to a doctor or an emergency room. Ask that they document your visit.
• Know where you can go to get help; tell someone what is happening to you. Contact Someplace Safe and find out about laws and other resources available to you before you have to use them during a crisis.
• Plan with your children and identify a safe place for them. Reassure them that their job is to stay safe, not to protect you.
• Acquire job skills or take courses at a community college as you can.
• Set money aside or ask friends or family members to hold money for you.

General Guidelines for Leaving an Abusive Relationship

• You may request a police stand-by or escort while you leave.
• If you need to sneak away, be prepared. Make a plan for how and where you will escape. Plan for a quick escape.
• Put aside emergency money as you can.
• Hide an extra set of car keys.
• Pack an extra set of clothes for yourself and your children and store them at a friend’s house. Avoid using the homes of next-door neighbors, close family members and mutual friends.
• Take phone numbers of friends, relatives, doctors, schools, etc., as well as other items, including:
  • Driver’s license
  • Regularly needed medication
  • Credit cards or a list of credit cards you hold yourself or jointly, checkbooks and information about bank accounts and other assets, pay stubs

• If time is available, also take:
  • Citizenship documents (such as your passport, green card, etc.), verification of social security numbers, welfare identification, copy of marriage license, birth certificates, will and other legal documents
  • Titles, deeds and other property information
  • Medical records, children’s school and immunization records, insurance information
  • Valued pictures, jewelry or personal possessions
  • You may also create a false trail. Call motels, real estate agencies and schools in a town at least six hours away from where you plan to relocate. Ask questions that require a call back to your house in order to leave phone numbers on record.

After Leaving the Abusive Relationship

If getting a protective order and the offender is leaving:

• Change your locks and phone number.
• Change your work hours and routes taken to work and to transport children to school.
• Inform friends, neighbors and employers that you have a restraining order in effect. Keep a certified copy of your restraining order with you at all times.
• Give copies of the restraining order to employers, neighbors and schools along with a picture of the offender.
• Call law enforcement to enforce the order.

If you leave:

• Be aware that addresses are on restraining orders and police reports. Be careful to whom you give your new address and phone number. Consider renting a post office box or using the address of a friend for your mail.
• Change your work hours, if possible. See if you can have your calls screened by a receptionist.
• Alert school authorities of the situation. Consider changing your children’s schools. Tell people who take care of your children who can pick up your children. Explain your situation to them and provide them with a copy of the restraining order.
• Reschedule appointments that the offender is aware of. Use different stores and frequent different social spots.
• Alert neighbors and request that they call the police if they feel you may be in danger.
• Replace wooden doors with steel or metal doors. Install security systems if possible. Install a motion light.
• Call the telephone company to request caller ID. Ask that your phone number be blocked so that if you call anyone, neither your partner nor anyone else will be able to get your new, unlisted phone number.