Description
The aim of this project is: - Formation of conditions for providing the specialized social consultancy, including securing documents for acreditation of mentioned service and the process of accreditation itself. - formation and securing of conditions for regular psychological help focusing on solving the personal, emotional and other problems of our clients and children, as well and solving traumatic events in their lives. We consider the psychological help as really necessary and efficient in our concern - besides the psychological help we would like to establish the therapeutic services, especially art therapy which we consider as a very useful facilitation for our clients and our work, as well. - Formation and securing of conditions for free legal aid by solving legal problems of our clients (e.g. divorce, confide the children to their care, aliments, claiming the aliments, bodily harm). - strengthening the cooperation with institutions of public sector, especially town offices and the Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family in searching for women in danger. Project expects to achieve: 1. extension of existing basic services of new specialized services in advising center, 2. establishment of security measures in emergency housing, 3. the accreditation of specialized social counseling, The beneficiaries of the project are: victims of partner violence, children and civil servants
Summary of project results
Project Bridges has been established with a purpose to improve the quality of services provided to victims of any form of violence, aimed at women and children at risk of violence or experiencing violence. Center belongs to successful project funding applicants and was awarded the grant within the Norwegian Finacial Mechanism, via its administrator, The Government Office of the Slovak Republic. The financial support covered new psychological counseling service, legal assistance and improvement of the direct work with our clients – violence victims, primarily children. Significant real engagement in the project was the reality of the shortage, respectively. The lack of counseling and support services for victims of violence in the region of southern Slovakia. In our practice, we have struggled with the problems of women and often their children, who were at risk of violence and had no place to go. There was no built-in network and linking organizations that could help, no needed information, and so on. By fulfilling the objectives of the project we have created a counseling center in the district town in the south of Slovakia. The counseling center provides professional social, psychological, legal, special-pedagogical counseling. In the period of one year we will provide advice to about 125 clients. As a result of the project's results, the basic services provided were expanded by a new professional - psychologist, lawyer, therapist, at the same time security equipment for accommodation for victims of violence was established and our center was accredited to provide specialized social counseling, which is a basic condition of the center's functioning legislation. The planned results of the project were to create a psychologist, lawyer and social therapist, repair the exterior façade, introduce a camera system and make a safe gate on an emergency housing facility, gain accreditation for specialized social counseling. The actual results of the project were achieved as planned.
Summary of bilateral results
One of important project outlines was to record a brief comparison of social services providing to violence victims in Slovakia to those in Norway. We were allowed to contact our Norwegian partners repeatedly, especially partners from Crisis Centre in Bergen and surrounding municipalities. Mutual sharing of information and experience from the difficult work with violence victims contributed valuably to the comparison creation. At the same time, he was able to attend a study tour organized by the SK09 Program Administrator in Oslo and to visit other collaborating entities in Norway. Together with the Norwegian partners, we organized a conference in December 2016, linked to workshops designed especially for fellow professionals and for the public. The program of the conference was the Bridges project, information on services provided to victims of violence in Norway, at the same time presented and discussed the case studies of two women at risk of violence and their personal stories from the point of view of the provided services and assistance in Slovakia, and from the point of view of the provided services and assistance in Norway. The workshops were focused on artetherapy, game therapy, and examples of good practice. Thanks to personal meetings and communication in the framework of the bilateral partnership, we have created a brief brochure aimed at comparing services provided to victims of violence in Slovakia and Norway.