Safety Planning with IPV Clients: A Framework for Pre-Licensed Therapists

Safety planning is not a form or a checklist you hand a client, and you don't finish it in one session.

It is an ongoing clinical process: a collaborative conversation with your client about reducing risk and building toward a life that isn't organized around surviving an abusive relationship.

For pre-licensed MFTs, safety planning with IPV clients is one of the most important skills to develop and one of the areas where supervision matters most. This post offers a framework, with attention to LGBTQ+ clients.

The most common mistake in safety planning is moving too fast.

When a clinician learns a client is in an abusive relationship, the impulse is often to help them leave quickly by offering resources and urging action. The impulse is well meant. It often doesn't serve the client.

Leaving is dangerous. The period right after leaving is the most dangerous time for IPV survivors, and the risk of lethal violence rises when a survivor tries to leave. Leaving also carries heavy practical and financial complications. For LGBTQ+ clients, it may mean losing community and housing in ways that create new risks.

Safety planning that starts with "you need to leave" is advice-giving that ignores the client's actual situation.

Effective safety planning starts where the client is. That means:

• Understanding the client's goals rather than what you think their goals should be
• Understanding the specific risks they face, including risks tied to their identity and situation
• Understanding the resources and support they can reach
• Understanding the barriers to safety, whether practical, financial, relational, or identity-based
• Working together on steps that are feasible given all of the above

Safety planning is a conversation rather than a protocol. Some elements belong in every safety planning process with IPV clients.

Assessing current danger. First, understand the current level of danger, including:

• How often the abuse happens and how severe it is
• Whether there are weapons in the home
• Whether the abuser has threatened to kill the client or themselves
• Whether the abuse has been escalating
• Whether the client has tried to leave before and what happened

Validated tools exist for lethality assessment in IPV. The Danger Assessment (DA), developed by Jacquelyn Campbell, is widely used and has been validated across populations. Learn these tools and use them in consultation with your supervisor.

Understanding the client's situation. The plan needs to rest on the specifics of the client's life:

• Do they have children? What are the custody and safety implications?
• Do they have access to money, documents, and transportation?
• Do they have people they can call and places they can go?
• Are they dependent on the abuser for housing?
• Are there immigration-related risks?
• What is their relationship to their community? Does it hold risks, resources, or both?

Identifying safety strategies. Work out concrete strategies for different scenarios:

• If the abuse escalates in the moment: What can the client do to create distance or get out?
• If the client decides to leave: What does a safe departure look like, and what needs to be in place first?
• If the client is not ready to leave: What can reduce risk in the current situation?
• In an emergency: Who can the client call, and where can they go?

Building toward longer-term safety. Safety planning also covers the conditions that make lasting safety possible, such as financial independence and stable housing.

Safety planning with LGBTQ+ IPV survivors involves factors that don't arise, or arise differently, in heterosexual relationships.

Affirming resources. Know which local and national resources serve LGBTQ+ survivors. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) has trained advocates who can connect callers with LGBTQ+-affirming services. The New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) runs a hotline for LGBTQ+ survivors, and many cities have LGBTQ+-specific domestic violence organizations. Know what exists in your area.

Shelter access. Many domestic violence shelters are not equipped to serve LGBTQ+ clients, and trans women in particular have historically been turned away from women's shelters. Be honest with clients about what is available and help them think through alternatives.

Community considerations. In close LGBTQ+ communities, the abuser and survivor may share friends and community spaces. The plan has to account for that, helping the client work out which community members are safe and how to keep supportive connections without exposure to the abuser.

Outing risks. For clients who aren't fully out, the plan needs to address the risk of being outed, whether by the abuser as control or as a side effect of seeking help from services that aren't affirming. Help clients think through who they can tell and what the risks are.

Trans-specific considerations. For trans clients, the plan may need to address:

• Access to gender-affirming care after leaving, especially if the abuser has been paying for care
• The safety of shelter and housing options for trans people
• Legal name and gender marker issues in protective orders and other documents
• How transphobia may narrow their options and affect their credibility with systems

Immigration considerations. For LGBTQ+ immigrants, the plan may need to address immigration status and deportation risk, and connect them with legal help. Protections for immigrant survivors under the Violence Against Women Act apply regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

Bring safety planning with IPV clients to supervision routinely, not only when you have mandatory reporting questions.

Your supervisor can help you:

• Assess the level of danger accurately
• Think through the barriers and resources in the client's situation
• Find LGBTQ+-affirming resources in your area
• Work through the clinical and ethical complexity of clients who aren't ready to leave
• Manage your own countertransference, including the fear and helplessness this work can bring up

This is complex, high-stakes clinical work. Don't do it alone.

One of the hardest parts of IPV work is sitting with a client who isn't ready to leave, who may be in serious danger and still not at a point where leaving is possible or wanted.

That is a clinical reality, not a clinical failure.

Research on leaving abusive relationships consistently shows that survivors often leave and return several times before leaving for good, and each attempt is part of the process. Your job is not to speed it up by pushing a decision the client isn't ready to make. Your job is to stay present and keep the door open while the client builds the conditions that will make leaving possible.

That takes clinical patience: holding hope for the client without imposing your timeline. It also takes good supervision, because the countertransference in this work can be intense.

Document safety planning conversations carefully, including:

• Your assessment of the current level of danger
• The specific safety strategies discussed
• The client's response and engagement
• Any resources provided
• Plans for follow-up
• Consultation with your supervisor

Good documentation protects you and shows you took the client's safety seriously.

Mx. Love C. Dialogos is an LMFT and AAMFT Approved Supervisor offering queer-affirming clinical supervision via telehealth. Licensed in Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, New Mexico, Hawaii, Idaho, and Alaska. request a session to discuss your supervision needs.

• IPV in Queer Relationships: What Clinicians Need to Know
• When Clients Disclose Sexual Abuse: A Guide for Pre-Licensed MFTs
• Mandatory Reporting for MFT Associates: What You Need to Know
• Managing Countertransference When Working with Trauma Survivors
• Trauma-Informed Supervision: Supporting Pre-Licensed MFTs Working with Abuse Survivors
• How to Choose a Queer-Affirming MFT Supervisor