During this time of isolation and distance, we want to offer more detail about how the Between Friends team is responding to the new challenges posed by COVID-19. The virus itself, and the measures that are being taken in the Chicago area to suppress its spread, pose specific dangers to the domestic violence survivors whom we serve.
“Unfortunately, telecounseling and virtual sessions are not options for most victims of domestic violence,” our head of counseling reports. “Many still live with abusive partners and used to use trips to work, to the grocery store, or to school pick-ups as a way to speak privately with trusted friends and family members, or to go to counseling sessions.”
At the moment, due to Illinois’ necessary shelter-in-place order, those opportunities are simply not available. To make matters worse, many abusive partners are using the shelter-in-place to control their partner.
For clients who are still living with their abuser, this social distancing and shelter-at-home policy can be especially scary and dangerous. Being forced to stay at home while under these already stressful public health conditions makes homelife feel even more tense and threatening for some. Clients feel more isolated and very few have virtual access to support, which is increasing their risk, compromising their safety, and making them more susceptible to more abuse.
Many of our clients receive services without their family or friends knowing. For folks who don’t have a safe and private home, maintaining communication has been challenging.
Meanwhile, many of our clients are also facing financial hardship, for the same reasons many across the country are. The difference is that their economic stability has often already been compromised by years of financial abuse and the continuing impact of abusive relationships even years after leaving. Our clients face many barriers to finding economic stability: Many clients work in the restaurant and hospitality industry, and the sudden loss of income they are experiencing is another challenge to their health and wellbeing.
Our counseling team has been working hard to ensure continuity of service. More than anyone — except the clients themselves — the counselors at Between Friends understand the challenges being faced in this unique moment.
Between Friends counselors are balancing the urgency they feel to support clients and offer comfort, with the need to maintain clients’ privacy and confidentiality over the course of this transition to remote services. Figuring out the technology and the safest ways to communicate with each client has taken a lot of effort and is a constant, ongoing process.
The challenges our counselors face include the fact that they are unable to offer all of the usual alternatives or courses of action, with so many ancillary social services being either unavailable or at least much more difficult to access.
Since our staff cannot currently rely on body language and visual cues to help communicate with clients, they have, in the words of one counselor, “slowing down and choosing my words especially carefully.”
It is significantly harder to support someone from a distance. De-escalating, grounding, and joining activities can still be used, but it is harder to establish that safe union with a client. Grounding and joining activities help to bring the client and counselor into the present and in touch with their own thoughts and physical sensations. These activities might take the form of slowing down and deepening breathing, or mindfully walking in a guided meditation, or exploring what a client notices about the present using smell, sight, touch, taste, and hearing in order to “ground” into the present moment.
To adapt to the challenges of working remotely, our counselors tell us they have been creating extra time to connect with their loved ones and coworkers, and holding healthy boundaries for how they work at home. For some, this has been a time of practicing “radical acceptance” and compassion: holding patience, peace, and grace as we all do the best we can to adjust while staying safe and healthy.