If you are still in contact or living with her abusive partner, you can increase your safety at home by:

 

• Knowing who to can contact in an emergency;

• Carrying a list of emergency numbers, or learning them if possible;

• Deciding where you can go in an emergency;

• Keeping spare change with you at all times, for using the telephone and transport;

• Informing trusted neighbours or friends of your situation;

• Installing security alarms or lights, or changing security locks;

You can increase your children’s safety by:

• Explaining that they should not get involved in an incident, even if they want to help;

• Ensuring that they know how to dial 999, ask for police, and state their address;

• Ensuring that they know how to get out of the house safely;

• Identifying where they can go or who they can call for help;

• Planning how you (and your children) could escape, if needed.

 

During an attack, you could increase your safety by:

 

• Staying away from the kitchen, or rooms where there are knives or other objects the abuser could use to attack you;

• Getting to a room with a door or window to escape;

• Getting to a room with a phone;

• Calling 999 as soon as possible for help, or shouting for help.

 

If you are planning to leave, you could pack the following in a bag, leaving the bag with a trusted neighbour or friend, or hide it if you can be sure that the abuser will not find it;

 

• Important documents such as birth certificates, passports, benefit books, legal papers;
• An extra set of car or house keys;
• Spare cash for telephones and transport
• A list of emergency addresses and telephone numbers (e.g. Women’s Aid);
• Medicines (you could ask your GP for a spare prescription, in case of emergencies)
• Toiletries, clothes and baby provisions.

 

You should try to leave when your partner is not at home. In an emergency, you should leave without collecting any of the above items; they are not as important as the lives of you and your children.