Description
Domestic violence represents a major challenge for Estonian society. Lack of sufficient support mechanisms for victims, competent specialists and research on the issue limit the states’ possibilities to tackle these problems efficiently. The objective of the project is to reduce domestic and gender-based violence in Estonia. This project is expected to increase the awareness of domestic violence and gender-based violence in general. The project will improve support services and cooperation between relevant organisations and professionals. Relevant staff, justice system professionals and psychologists will be trained in gender-based violence. The victims of domestic violence, women and their families using hotline support services as well as professionals working in the field will benefit from the project. The donor project partner, Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, will give expert advise about the compilation of crisis centre statistics. The impact of this cooperation is sustainable and fundamental and it will lead to wider and better cooperation within the network of specialists, trained trainers and improvements in collecting statistics.
Summary of project results
The Project was necessary to foster services offered for victims of domestic violence; make services more systematical and equal across Estonia; strengthen cooperation between specialists with different backgrounds; wider public knowledge of domestic and gender-based violence. The Project made great change to tackle domestic and gender-based violence. Call-in helpline "1492" was established and it worked 12h a day. Since 2014 helpline is available 24/7. Trained specialists were able to answer both in Estonian and in Russian. Specialists were people who worked at the shelters across Estonia to use their expterise also for counselling. Psychologial and Juridical counselling was established in 13 shelters all over Estonia. More than 6200 hours of psychological and 4600 hours of Juridical counselling was given. The Project Promoter worked out service standards for shelters, which stated minimum requirements for shelters in Estonia. It helped to equalise services in shelters. Training of specialists from shelters and for helpline was carried out. Trainers of gender-based violence training programme was established. Due to the 224h hours of training there are now people who are able to train new people joining the lines of shelters. Also study trip to Norway was held, supervision for workers in shelters was given, yearly conferences of domestic and gender-based violence was held and public knowledge of domestic and gender based violence was risen. To understand the results better, 2 studies about the visibility of help-line in public. The knowledge has risen during the two years between the studies. Also feedback of women in shelters was collected and the main knowledge is that women were very satisfied with the services.
Summary of bilateral results
Cooperation with NKVTS. Was very productive. They helped to compile training, find suitable lecturers from Norway and find necessary materials that are suitable to translate into Estonian. Also NKVTS helped with study-trip and organise final conference. Cooperation with Krisesentersekretariatet. Very productive as well. The role of the partner was above all to help organise study-trip and organise on-spot practice. The trip went extremenly well as specialists received information about service system in Norway for the victims and for their children and also about services offered for children. Good overview of legislation was also received.