Supporting AAPI Survivors Through Legal Services

Please join PLA in celebrating Asian Women's Wellness Day on Saturday, May 15, 2021, from 10 am to 2 pm at 1001 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107. We will celebrate and honor AAPI women across generations by promoting community care and building solidarity. During the event, PLA will share how we support AAPI women through civil legal services including but not limited to supporting survivor safety and stability.

All survivors of intimate partner violence experience barriers to seeking help. In a survey of AAPI survivors through the Family Violence Prevention Fund, AAPI survivors described additional institutional, cultural, and individual barriers. At PLA, we support AAPI survivors by continuing to seek understanding of these additional barriers and providing solutions with a trauma-informed and holistic service model.

We support survivors in the language they speak. We host an Immigrant Women’s Hotline that accepts voice messages from survivors based on the language they speak, and we call the survivor back in the required language. All verbal communication with the survivor is managed by bilingual staff members or occurs using language line, a live phone translation service. We support survivors'  language access needs by informing them about their right to language access with the Court and Police Department. We assist survivors by requesting interpreters on behalf of survivors during hearings, and we prioritize drafting pleadings for survivors with limited English proficiency.

We provide services to survivors of intimate partner violence regardless of their immigration status if the civil legal service is necessary to ameliorate the violence. We refer survivors to HIAS PA when the survivor has additional questions about their immigration status and is interested in finding out more information about survivor-based immigration benefits. We address survivor’s fear based on their lack of immigration status by informing them that they are eligible to access the Court and seek police intervention regardless of their immigration status.

If you are an AAPI survivor, please know that we are here to support you! Please call our hotline at 215.981.3838 from Monday through Thursday between 9:30 AM to Noon.