Barrier Free Living, Inc.

Barrier Free Living is committed to providing the most comprehensive interventions both residential and non-residential to support people with disabilities in breaking away from victimization. Barrier Free Living through its program development, research, and thought leadership is working to raise up the issue of domestic violence and people with disabilities nationally.

Barrier Free Living's non-residential domestic violence program has grown from a staff of two to a staff of 14 providing counseling, advocacy, case management and public education. Our sister program, Freedom House for People with Disabilities Inc., was the first totally accessible shelter in the United States presently licensed to serve 95 residents at a time.

Barrier Free Living Apartments has 50 family supportive housing units for families with a head of household with a disabling medical condition. 100% of our families survived domestic violence. 85% of our 70 studio supportive housing units are survivors of intimate partner violence. Barrier Free Living is presently developing a 74-unit building with 44 units for domestic violence survivors and 30 units for seniors transitioning our of nursing homes under New York State's Emire State Supportive Housing Initiative.

BFL staff have presented and national and regional conferences on aspects of domestic violence and people with disabilities. This past year, BFL did a series of webinars for the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Christopher and Dana Reeves Foundation.

BFL is collaborating with Stoneybrook University on a number of research projects delving into the dynamics of the intersection between disability and domestic violence.

The Barrier Free Living Family of Companies is already the largest provider of domestic violence intervention services for people with disabilities in the United States. With 34 years of experience in the field, we have a team of individuals that have worked with us for over ten years. We internally train staff to facilitate trauma-informed care with a multi-disciplinary approach. We are the first domestic violence program in the country to engage occupational therapy and the focus on evaluating Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and providing individual and group training to improve ADL skills. We have a full-time nurse to facilitate navigation of the medical needs of residents who have to move their care to safer locations. We have a team of social workers and case managers to provide trauma-informed counseling as well as assistance in accessing housing and other supports necessary for an individual or family to live successfully in the community. We have developed a trauma-informed model for permanent supportive housing. We have just put a legal team in place to work with individuals in all of our programs that need representation in family court.

Key staff members have published papers about their work, made presentations in local, state and national conferences on domestic violence and people with disabilities.

We have established a city-wide non-residential domestic violence program that serves hundreds of people a year through a domestic violence hotline, virtual and face-to-face counseling, case management services, and advocacy.
We created the first totally accessible domestic violence shelter in the country (under a sister corporation Freedom House for People with Disabilities). Freedom House has served victims from 40 states, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Ghana.
We have created 50 units of supportive housing for families with a head of household who has a disabling medical condition and is a survivor of domestic violence. We have created 70 studio units primarily for survivors of intimate partner violence.
We are in process of developing another building which will have 74 units of supportive housing (studios, two-bedroom and three-bedroom units) for survivors of domestic violence (44 units) and seniors transitioning out of nursing homes (30 units)