Description
The main goal of the project is to establish a new women's safe home in accordance with the European standards as well as to provide standard services for safe living of mothers with children, victims of partnership violence. The outcome is the provision of professional and complex services incl. social care and legal protection for victims of partnership violence and children of victims (setting of safe woman's home; service provision; information campaign). The outputs are: conselling, non-stop phone line, providing therapy, training and educational activities for Safe women's home clients, training activities for employees. The target groups are victims of partnership violence, children and disadvantaged citizens. The Norwegian partners will contribute with their professional experience and knowledge in the area of work with partnership violence victims. The partnership will result in writing bilateral article and publishing it in Slovak and Norwegian periodicals and in organization of Workshops.
Summary of project results
The „Safe House for Women – a space for a full life without violence“ project and its implementation helped to fill an important gap in the system of support and protection of victims of gender-based violence (GBV). Nitra was the only self-governing region where only one organization dealing with the issue of domestic violence was monitored, and also met the minimal European standards. Thanks to the implementation of the project we have created 6 family units (15 beds +2) out of a total need of 88 beds needed by the NSGR. The NSGR is however still in need of more than 50 beds. The newly created Safe House for Women is accessible 24 hours daily, employing qualified staff as the only such place in the NSGR. Women and mothers with children, as well as victims of GBV, can find a shelter within its premises, a safe place, support in providing for their basic needs, mitigation of ailments caused by violence, reinforcement of their confidence, support in building a sense of independence from the tyrant, as well as protection, support and help with building a new life without violence. We managed to connect the Safe House for Women to a security service thanks to a „panic button“. Since january 2015 we added a phone hotline for victims of domestic violence to the services provided by the Safe House for Women. During the course of the project we executed an information campaign with the aim of providing information about the implementation of the project, the existence of the Safe House for Women, the phone hotline and the issue of violence against women, etc. The activities provided thanks to the financial support were: social counseling, specialized social counseling, psychological and legal counseling, crisis intervention, educational and special-ed care, crisis hotline, expressive therapy techniques based on art-therapy and music therapy activities, kinetic therapy, activities aimed at involving the clients in the day-to-day maintenance of the Safe House for Women, activities aimed to support the independece of the clients, activities aimed to support participation on decisions concerning their lives etc. While the Safe House for Women project was running we also established a crisis hotline which provided clients with 259 interventions during the course of the project. 20 200 pieces of information packages were distributed during the information campaign.
Summary of bilateral results
In the course of the project we have established a partnership with 2 organizations - Oslo Krisesenter and Glåmdal Krisesenter IKS, with whom we have participated on the following activities: - An international conference for professionals working in the field of domestic violence, in which our Norwegian partners took an active role by preparing a panel discussion and leading a workshop, and also lectoring the staff of The Sun Center, n.p.o. (October 2015) - A work meeting with the representatives of the Oslo Krisesenter (May 2016) - In November 2015 and between November and December 2016 we have organized internships in Norway, where we had the opportunity to get more acquainted with our partnership organizations, and also with other organizations, their approach, the methods and techniques used iwhen working with clients, their legislation, financing etc. - 2 bilateral articles were also published as part of the bilateral cooperation Exchange of experiences regarding working with children and victims of GBV as well as victims of domestic violence - Strenghtening bilateral cooperation dealing with the issues of close relationship violence and domestic violence - Mutual participation implemented through exchange of experiences and information with the experts from our partner country helped improve the effectivity of the project activities as well as streghtened the expertise of the staff participating on this project - The opportunity of an internship in the donor country was a very valuable source of information when it came to creating the standards for running a Safe House for Women and the accompanying services, and it also served as an inspiration for the activities aimed to push for legislation changes in Slovakia, in order to bring them into accord with the legislation in other EU countries - Knowing that our partners also left with new information, for example relating to work with children, was also motivating