Sidewalks to Sexual Violence Prevention: A Guide to Exploring Social Inclusion with People with Developmental Disabilities

Sidewalks to Sexual Violence Prevention: A Guide to Exploring Social Inclusion with People with Developmental Disabilities

When I feel sad I tell someone. It makes me feel better. I sit in a different room. It brings tears to my eyes. It feels good to cry. I feel a lot better. It makes me keep going.

Written by a participant with disabilities

The guide shares the stories of one collaboration with 25 people with a variety of disabilities who sought to increase social inclusion, which is the connective tissue that creates an opportunity to have safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments. If you are looking for prevention tools meant to create protective environments (per the CDC Stop SV: a Technical Package to Prevent SV), please check out the Inclusion Appendix or the Inclusion Project Guide that ICADV developed with 25 people with developmental and cognitive disabilities and featured by PreventConnect and National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC).

The complete guide to replicate the project and all accessible data collection methods created and used by the Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative. You will find agency inclusion mapping tools developed by Evelyn G. Smith who worked at Middle Way House, focus group protocols for people with cognitive and developmental disabilities, focus group protocols for caregivers, and community-wide participatory social mapping tools that were developed with people with a variety of disabilities. Please use and share these tools and resources!

The public health approach to violence prevention asks us to engage in a 4 step process to identify the problem, address the associated factors that increase or decrease violence (risk/protective factors), evaluate both the process and outcomes, and share the findings (positive and negative).

The Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative formed in 2015 with the financial support of the Indiana State Department of Health Rape Prevention and Education grant to collaboratively develop community-wide solutions to increase inclusion based upon unique barriers found in Bloomington, Indiana. Adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities along with eleven cross-sector partners engaged in participatory social mapping to assess barriers to inclusion in neighborhoods, public spaces and businesses.

In 2016, the data about barriers to inclusion specific to Bloomington were prioritized for solutions-advocacy and implementation. By sharing the tools developed over the course of the project along with the lessons learned, the Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative encourages others to engage with people with disabilities to examine factors that reduce sexual violence risks specific to their communities and implement practice-based solutions to increase inclusion, which is protective across all aspects of human life.

Inclusion project tools created in collaboration with Maggie Matson, MPH, and Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative include:

Sidewalks Explored

In partnership with Stone Belt, Arc (2016), ICADV participated in a national conversation with CALCASA and PreventConnect about emergent inclusion efforts in sexual violence prevention and in research using the data and efforts of the Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative. The project was followed through to a session at the 2016 National Sexual Assault Conference, which co-presented by two project stakeholders. The session was recorded and it is available below.

• Guidance, A Health Equity Approach to Sexual Violence Prevention, a joint publication by the Prevention Institute and National Sexual Violence Resource Center, June 2021
• Webinar, “Peer Learning Forum: Implementing Community-Level Strategies to Prevent Sexual and Domestic Violence,” October 5, 2017
• Podcast, “National Sexual Assault Workshop Preview,” with Ashleigh Klein of ValorUS, formerly CALCASA, PreventConnect, and Prevention Institute, July 22, 2016.
• Webinar, “What About Power and Patriarchy? Examining Social Cohesion Strategies to Prevent Sexual and Domestic Violence,” PreventConnect, July 13, 2016.
• Webinar, “Social Inclusion as Sexual Violence Prevention Strategy,” National Sexual Violence Resource Center in Partnership with PreventConnect, October 2016 Newsletter video-recording of NSAC 2016.
• Handouts from the project including participant interviews, tools and PowerPoints are available online.

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Credit

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