Access For All!

Counselling and support for women and girls with disabilities affected by violence

Women and girls with disabilities are much more often affected by violence than women without disabilities. The current study on the “Living Conditions and Strain on Women with Impairments and Disabilities in Germany “ (2012) confirms the high number of these women and girls affected by violence.

Reasons for the low utilisation of help and support facilities

Unfortunately, women and girls with disabilities affected by violence all too rarely use the mobile services of women’s counselling centres and rape crisis centres. Many women’s counselling centres do not reach women and girls with disabilities. Many women and girls with disabilities do not feel addressed by the services. There are various reasons for this:

  • Existing support facilities are often not accessible to and/or not barrier-free for the disabled. This excludes many women with disabilities.
  • Some services of the women’s counselling centres are not explicitly also geared towards women and girls with disabilities.
  • Some women and girls with disabilities lack information about the support system, above all if they do not have free access to the relevant documentation or if the documents are not readable and comprehensible to them.
  • There is a lack of barrier-free documents for the target group.
  • Moreover, some affected women and girls, especially those with learning difficulties, lack the understanding that they (have) experienced violence, which they do not need to put up with.