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Pennsylvania (multiple locations)

Project Name

Geographic Focus

Project Partners

Overview

The Pennsylvania collaboration consists of the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania (DRN), the PA Coalition Against Domestic Violence (PCADV) and the PA Coalition Against Rape (PCAR). The organizations began working together in 2004 with a focus on improving physical, programmatic and attitudinal accessibility to victims’ services for people with disabilities. Additionally, they have focused on raising awareness on the part of disability services providers of the prevalence and vulnerability to violence of persons with disabilities and the existing community resources available to the individuals they support.  In 2007, the collaboration received a grant from the Office on Violence Against Women’s Disability Grant Program. 

The vision of the Pennsylvania collaboration is that people with disabilities in Pennsylvania who have experienced sexual or domestic violence will receive appropriate, responsive and accessible supports and services.

The mission of the Pennsylvania collaboration is to ensure timely and appropriate services for persons with disabilities  who are victims/survivors of sexual or domestic violence. This will be accomplished by

• Promoting and fostering collaboration between service providers supporting persons with disabilities and those assisting victims/survivors;
• Establishing policies and practices that will promote responsiveness and accessibility to services and support for individuals with disabilities;       
• Eliminating physical, attitudinal, cultural and programmatic barriers that prevent people with disabilities from having equal access to victims’ services providers if they have experienced or survived sexual or domestic violence.
• Eliminating physical, attitudinal, cultural and programmatic barriers that prevent people with disabilities from experiencing the timely, appropriate, and supportive response by disability service providers when disclosing
• Assuring that local service providers can provide appropriate assistance at whatever point victims/survivors with disabilities enter the service delivery system.  

While the work of the Pennsylvania collaboration partner agencies takes place at the state level, the OVW Disability Grant Program affords the collaboration the opportunity to work intensively with a few communities within the state to accomplish their mission.  The Pennsylvania collaboration decided that the focus of their work within these communities would be cross-disability and cross-violence against women. Additionally, they developed a set of criteria to assist in their selection of the communities in which they would work. Some of the elements taken into account included geographic and cultural diversity, willingness among community members to take part in this process, and areas where collaboration among disability and victims’ services providers was already in existence or about to occur. Ultimately, the Pennsylvania collaboration decided to foster a collaboration with disability service agencies and violence against women service providers in Dauphin/Perry and Lancaster counties.

In order to effectively improve services and create change in their own organizations and within their selected community partners, the Pennsylvania collaboration took part in a planning and development process that included activities to:  strengthen their collaboration, identify their focus, learn about the needs in their own organizations and within their selected communities, and develop a concrete plan for addressing those needs.  The Pennsylvania collaboration is currently in the process of identifying the needs in their own organizations and within their selected communities and developing their strategic plan for change.  As their work evolves, so will the information contained in this section.

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