Hairstylists leverage bonds with clients to recognize domestic abuse

On the surface, this seems a little odd.  Your hairstylist who studied cosmetology might also serve as a good therapist?  However, at least us ladies know, there is quite a bond that forms with your hairstylist.  Often we find ourselves chatting away about things we wouldn’t share as openly with our closest friends.  They get to know our families, our husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, children.

I ran across this article in the NY Times- Cutting Hair While Cutting to the Chase on Clients’ Domestic Abuse that was rather interesting.

Here are some snippets from the article. The full article can be seen by clicking the article title above.

The privileged, often therapeutic relationship between hairdressers and clients has long been the subject of magazine articles and movies. A growing movement in New York and across the nation tries to harness that bond to identify and prevent domestic violence, a pervasive problem that victims are often too ashamed to reveal to law enforcement or other public officials.

Ms. Vasquez, Ms. Castillo and Ms. Florentino are all stylists in Manhattan who have been trained (or are being trained) as part of a one-year-old program by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services in beauty salons in the Washington Heights area, where a high number of cases of abuse and neglect in homes have a component of violence that is not necessarily aimed at children. The initiative joins similar efforts that have been sprouting across the nation; perhaps the best known, called Cut It Out and based in Chicago, has trained 40,000 salon professionals in all 50 states to recognize telltale signs of domestic abuse…

…“The salon may be one of the few places women might be without their abuser around,” said Laurie Magid, a former state prosecutor who is acting United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. “This program really addresses a need. You don’t have a case unless you have a crime reported in the first place and that is the difficult area of domestic violence.”

While Cut it Out trains stylists offsite, the Washington Heights workshops, conducted in Spanish, take place inside beauty parlors during the hours that clients are served, which not only makes it easier for people to participate, but also enhances the comfort factor…

Read about the City of Chicago’s Cut It Out program HERE or HERE.

There’s no data out there to report on the success rate, but do you think this approach could be helpful to women?