IMPACT:Ability

IMPACT:Ability brings together a sexual violence prevention program with a Boston disability services agency. Together, they worked to create culture change supportive of equitable practices and multiple forms of relationships for people with disabilities. Meg Stone, IMPACT:Ability Executive Director and Keith Jones presented September 1, 2016 at the National Sexual Assault Conference on their work “Collaborating with the Disability System to Prevention Sexual Assault and to Support Survivors with Disabilities.” IMPACT implemented policies that support the ethical and equitable treatment of people who receive services at a disability services day program in Boston. Using a variety of evaluation methods, Ms. Stone reported most non-managerial staff could not correctly identify proper reporting protocol in 2012 before her intervention. In 2014, post-intervention evaluations demonstrated most staff could correctly identify reporting protocols and were more likely to report caregiver abuse of a client with disabilities.IMPACT:Ability is an evidence-based program that uses a three pronged approach to:

• build capacity within agencies to support and report abuse using model policies and procedures;
• empower people with disabilities with relationship skills necessary to pursue safe, healthy, and consensual interactions with others; and
• provide organizational consulting and consent training, including sexual violence prevention model policies (code of ethics, mandated reporter of abuse, participant-on-participant abuse, whistleblower, abuse disclosure checklist, residential sexuality).

Credit

Post written by Cierra Olivia Thomas Williams, Prevention Specialist at Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence