Create A Safety Plan
It’s a personalized, practical plan for ways to stay safe while in a relationship, planning to leave, or even after you leave. It is custom to you and your circumstances. You can use this plan as a tool when faced with difficult, scary, or potentially dangerous situations with your partner, because your safety is paramount.
When you’re ready to take the first step towards finding support, a safety plan is a great place to start. Please click the chat function, or call our helpline 780-479-0058, and our team can help make your personalized safety plan. They are real people here for you 24/7 by phone, chat, or email.
If you are in immediate physical danger, please call 911 or your local emergency number.
Identifying Danger
Establishing potential triggers and behaviours in your partner, past and present, that made you fear for your safety. This could include situations that resulted in danger to your physical, emotional, or psychological health.
Planning for Safety
Exploring safety strategies that work for you. Different strategies work for different forms of abuse. Shelter staff can help you develop custom strategies to increase your safety.
Assessing Risk
Identifying the level of risk. This may include speaking about your partner’s actions or reactions to those triggers, be it emotional or physical. This helps shelter staff determine the best and safest way to support you.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Rehearsing. After developing your safety plan, shelter staff will encourage you to rehearse it. This way it’s easier to implement if you ever need to use it.
Things to Consider
REACHING OUT FOR HELP - TECHNOLOGY
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If you do not have a phone, plan a route in which you can leave the home and arrive to a safe place (such as a neighbour's) so you can safely call the police or RCMP.
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Remember if you use a calling card or credit card, the numbers you call will be on your telephone bill. If you need to keep your phone calls confidential, use coins or ask a friend if you can use their phone.
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Be careful when reaching out for help via Internet or telephone. Erase your Internet browsing history, websites visited for resources, e-mails sent to friends/family asking for help. To learn how to erase browsing information click here. If you called for help, dial another number immediately after in case your partner hits redial.
TELLING PEOPLE YOUR PLAN
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Create an emergency code with a trusted friend, family member, or local shelter (such as "I would like to order pizza", or "I am going to be late for coffee"), so if you need someone else to contact 9-1-1 for you, they can.
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Plan with your children and identify a safe place for them. Reassure them that their job is to stay safe, not to protect you.
PACKING A BAG
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Pack an emergency 'to go' bag. If your partner comes home and you are feeling threatened and want to leave, you can grab the kids, and this bag - which will contain clothing, important documents (such as birth certificates, child tax documents, tax assessment, etc.), diapers, formula, toys, and other essential items, so you can quickly leave the situation.
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Identify which door, window, stairwell, or elevator offers you the quickest way out of the home. Try to practice your route as many times as possible.
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Decide where you will go if you have to leave, even if you do not think it will come to that.
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Try to save some money, and hide it, or give it to a family member or a friend.
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If possible, open your own bank account so you have some money of your own. When you open it, remember not to use your home address, email or phone number as the bank statements may come to your home. See if you can use a friend or family member's contact information.
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Plan carefully before you leave. Your partner may try to hurt you if they think you will leave and they are losing control of you.
CONSIDER
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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. If your partner asks where you are going, give them a believable but false answer, such as a friend's home in a larger city a few hours away, or to your parents home (even if it is in a different province).