Around one in 12 blind and partially sighted people in the UK is believed to be a victim or survivor of domestic abuse, according to a report published by SafeLives and sight loss charity Vision Foundation.<\/p>\n
The findings show 8.6% \u2013188,000 \u2013 of the 2.19 million visually impaired women and men in the country have experience of domestic abuse. That compares with around 6% for the population as a whole, according to Office of National Statistics research.<\/p>\n
Before the SafeLives-Vision Foundation survey, Unseen: Blind and partially sighted people\u2019s experiences of domestic abuse<\/em>, there was no record of the domestic abuse experiences of visually impaired victims nor the many barriers they face in getting support, said Vision Foundation chief executive Olivia Curno.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were shocked by what the research uncovered. It\u2019s devastating to read, far worse than we had anticipated,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Among forms of abuse described by survivors were moving objects to cause falls, withholding support such as guiding equipment, not taking them to appointments and filming them without their knowledge.<\/p>\n \u201cParticipants also expressed very high levels of fear, particularly when not knowing where a blow or object might come from, nor how or if their children were being harmed in front of them,\u201d Safelives said in its summary of the report.<\/p>\n Among changes Vision Foundation and SafeLives propose are: training for individuals and organisations working with visually impaired people; domestic abuse champions for visual impairment organisations; a survivors\u2019 network to share experiences and help shape future research; awareness campaigns; and funding to enable organisations to implement change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Around one in 12 blind and partially sighted people in the UK is believed to be a victim or survivor of domestic abuse, according to a report published by SafeLives and sight loss charity Vision Foundation. The findings show 8.6% \u2013188,000 \u2013 of the 2.19 million visually impaired women and men in the country have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncdvmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}