Description
21,2% of adult women in Slovakia aged 18-64, who currently have a partner, experience violence. These women need professional, accessible and complex help with solving their situation. The project will be realised in Bratislava and Zilina County. There will be 3 organisations from Bratislava involved, the others are from Cadca, Zilina and Martin. The organisations will provide their services to women living in their cities, nearby towns and villages, but also in other counties. Most of the above mentioned organisations provide a helpline for women experiencing violence. This project is supposed to increase the quality of provided services and their accessibility in the above mentioned counties as well as to increase the proficiency of the workers providing these specific services to women and their children by education. The result of the project will be enhancement and stabilisation of services for women and children who are the victims of violence. The project is expected to achieve the result by the continual provision of professional complex consulting services and by the education of the workers consisting of 4 education seminars, 2 partner meetings and creation of the proceeding compilation for the complex help and professional services. The target groups are women and children endangered by domestic violence.
Summary of project results
A support system for victims of domestic violence is still at the development stage in our country. Help is provided mainly to women who experience relationship violence and to children. The field of domestic violence against seniors and other adults dependent on relatives' help remains little explored and is given marginal attention. There is no legislation nor system of help adapted to this field. That's why we wanted to carry out a project focusing on various preventive and informative activities to increase awareness of domestic violence within the project target groups. Through these activities, we sought potential and actual domestic violence victims, and we gave them help in resolving their situation. We increased the general public's awareness of domestic violence, which can affect people of any age. The main activities were: informative and preventive activities with seniors, preventive activities in kindergartens and schools, and the Stop the Violence! campaign. We provided social, psychological and legal counselling. We met the project goals. We widened the target group and we set up cooperation with local authorities where seniors' issues are primarily addressed. We conducted three Stop the violence! campaigns. During the project we created some information and educational materials for the target groups: a brochure for seniors focused on detecting domestic violence illustrated by specific situations and examples, as well as channels of assistance along with contact details; a brochure for female secondary school students - 'Princess manual' which is targeted at violence in relationships; a leaflet which presents our organisation and contacts for help, signs of domestic violence, etc. Thanks to the project, we updated 'The first contact with a domestic violence victim' brochure. This brochure and leaflets were distributed to local authorities, social departments, the police, etc. During the project we conducted 34 information and preventive campaigns for seniors, we detected 42 cases of domestic violence, we distributed 5800 leaflets to seniors. We also organized three fine-art campaigns called Stop the violence!, gave 8000 first contact leaflets, and performed preventive activities at schools, during which we detected 33 new cases among children and students. Throughout the project, we detected 81 new cases from the target group based on over 240 consultations.
Summary of bilateral results