Study and Survey Method
The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand our fellow Chicagoans who have acquired a disability from gun violence, and to inform the future role Access Living could play as a CIL to help meet their needs and advocate for policies and services.
In alignment with our disability independent living philosophy, and the desire to center those most affected by becoming disabled through gun violence, we felt it critical to use community participation to authentically identify patterns of needs and potential solutions.
We chose the method of recruiting paid peer facilitators, engaging in extensive community outreach, holding community individual and group interviews to collect narrative-based qualitative data, and then consolidating the qualitative data into an actionable set of program recommendations for Access Living.
Our hope is that the Access Living program recommendations would also benefit other CILs and nonprofits aiming to serve disabled survivors of community gun violence.
Core Study Values
Our project was designed by Access Living staff with disabilities, and it centered disabled people of color in its execution. To accomplish our goal of more deeply understanding the issue of gun violence in Chicago and the lived experience of survivors, we committed to not do more harm to the survivors or reinforce damaging stereotypes. It was also essential to be emotionally aware of the survivors’ trauma by using a trauma-informed approach. We also wanted to ensure that we reached people who spoke Spanish, as a number of survivors are from Spanish-speaking communities.
Recruiting Peer Facilitators
After establishing our core values, we recruited peer facilitators who were paid for their time. From the outset, we intended our peer facilitators to be themselves people who had acquired a disability from gun violence. We used the first few months of our study process to recruit peer facilitators. The peer facilitators not only conducted interviews, but also helped recruit potential participants. We wanted the facilitators to feel invested in the project and confident when conducting the listening sessions and interviews.
We asked the peer facilitators to attend an initial retreat where we went over the project in detail and explained their roles and expectations. In addition to the retreat, we asked the facilitators and key staff to attend three training sessions to help everyone implementing the project be more effective listeners and facilitators. The training sessions covered a range of subjects:trauma-informed practice, disability accessibility , speaking to the media, and conducting both group and one-on-one interviews. We held several mock sessions to help them prepare. The preparation helped educate and build confidence in the facilitators, allowing them to do the outreach work more seamlessly. We also asked facilitators to develop the interview questions for the participants. This process was engaging and helpful to the growth of the facilitators.
Our five peer facilitators comprised one woman and four men. Our facilitators included one Latino person, one Afro-Latina person, and four Black people. They were recruited from our networks of disabled people, activists, and gun violence survivors. They all identify as disabled, though some do not have visible physical disabilities from their shooting. They were compensated for their time and efforts on this project.
Group Listening Sessions and Individual Interviews
To create a safe space for survivor stories to be shared, we used a twofold interview approach in partnership with the facilitators. We set up both one-on-one interviews and a series of invitation-only group listening sessions. We conducted 10 individual one-on-one sessions and 21 group listening sessions, over a period of 11 months with 154 people. These sessions took place via Zoom and in person. They were promoted as an opportunity to join a growing peer-to-peer community and have meaningful conversations around shared experiences.
- All the participants were asked the same questions, which were designed in collaboration with our peer facilitators. The questions were as follows:
- Think of a positive experience you had while you were hurt or trying to heal. What was it like? How did the people around you ensure you were informed and felt included?
- How have your experiences in health care, at work, or at home changed since you have been injured?
- What did the people in your support system (family members/coworkers/health care professionals/friends) do right when you were first injured? What could they have done differently?
- What can the people in your support system (family members/coworkers/health care professionals/friends) do differently now? What are they doing well?
- What would have been helpful to know about how your life would change and what support is available when you were first injured?
- What have you learned about living as a disabled person? What do you still wonder about your changing life?
Because the peer facilitators had themselves acquired a disability from gun violence, we were able to connect with impacted individuals more deeply. The participants felt heard by the peer facilitators, who have been through a multitude of issues and scenarios on a day-to-day basis as a gun violence survivor.
Community Partner Outreach
We conducted citywide outreach to connect with potential community stakeholders who could help us identify and serve disabled survivors of gun violence in Chicago.
In addition to an informal literature review, we also engaged in conversation with federal, state and local community partners and organizations working on gun violence issues (see Appendix B). Our outreach included both community and government entities providing resources, services and advocacy related to violence prevention, intervention, and survivor supports. For example, we spoke with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation; Chicago CRED; Metropolitan Family Services; and the City of Chicago’s Community Safety Coordination Center Trauma and Victim Services. We also spoke with healthcare providers familiar with this work, such as the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Schwab Rehabilitation.
Resolving Study Challenges
As Access Living began planning the research and development of this effort, we anticipated several challenges. We worked to resolve each challenge as follows:
- This project was initiated and conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and most interviews and listening sessions were conducted virtually on Zoom. Later in the project, we folded in one in-person group session. We also transitioned facilitator training from virtual to in-person.
- Another challenge was interviewing newly impacted individuals who had become disabled due to gun violence, as well as their caregivers. Through this process, we found that not many newly injured survivors were interested in sharing their stories because they were not emotionally ready. Many of the people we were able to interview were injured many years ago. However, many of those who were injured years ago felt that no one around them understood what they were going through. Our sessions were often the first time they had really opened up about becoming disabled. We felt that including people with varying lengths of time post-injury offered a range of lessons for developing supports.
- Some recently injured people were still in rehab, and some potential interviewees had unexpected medical challenges. This posed issues for scheduling time to talk, but we compensated by increasing outreach.
- Some potential interviewees did not want to share their names because they did not want to make themselves targets of retaliatory action, or to be exposed to potential further harm. This helped us recognize the urgency and complexity of creating a safe place for people who had been victimized. We created measures to protect their identities and details of their circumstances to the greatest extent possible.
- Some interviewees, or potential interviewees, were embarrassed to talk about their access needs. This was notably more true for men than for women. The men tended to have internalized the view that they needed to do things themselves, as a man. Those who had not talked about their access needs often had difficulty naming what they were. To address these situations, we offered repetitions or alternative wording for the questions we needed to ask. We also offered hypothetical situations to help them understand the questions better. In these situations, it was incredibly valuable to have people with lived experience in the room, helping the interviewees talk about what they needed. The interviewees experienced this as support.
- In the beginning of our project, it was difficult to win commitment from survivors to be interviewed. But after a few people committed, word of mouth spread and we were able to secure more interviewees. Word of mouth ended up being an important recruiting method.
- In conducting outreach, we often found that we had to help community workers understand that we were not exploring violence prevention, but rather disabled survivor support. Violence prevention receives significant attention and investment, but very little has been done to teach and invest in disabled survivor support. Sometimes these conversations with community workers were challenging, but ultimately, we were able to walk them through understanding what survivors need.
- We had difficulty getting young people and LGBTQ+ people to come forward to tell their story. However, we are starting to hear from people in those groups. As hospital social workers became familiar with us, they began referring more diverse newly disabled people to us. We think this is a strong area for further outreach and development of programming.