SafeShelter will provide a workshop on the yearly WAVE conference (October 6-7, 2021)

August 19, 2021

The 23rd WAVE Conference will be happening online on October 6-7, 2021. The title of this year’s conference is Breaking the Cycle: Preventing and Tackling Sexualized Violence against Women and Children and is being organized in collaboration in our Portuguese WAVE Member Associação de Mulheres contra a Violência (AMCV).

EFJCA and the European Safe Shelter-project

Over the period 2021-2022 the EFJCA will participate in the European Safe Shelter-project. This EU co-funded project aims to provide capacity building training on developing, implementing and enforcing child safeguarding policies and frameworks for shelter and multisectoral staff working with shelters.

Women’s shelters

Women’s shelters are one of the most crucial, specialised support services for women victims of violence and for their children; they not only provide safe and emergency accommodation for women and their children to seek refuge from violence, but also consistently demonstrate being effective in improving mental health, reducing re-abuse and improving social outcomes.

Needs of children

Research on mother and children residing in shelters shows that a problematic mother-child relationship was identified in approximately 20% of cases; inadequate parenting was present in around 35% of cases and 80-90% of the children had witnessed violence suffered by their mother, and more than 50% had been direct victims of some type of abuse. Shelter staff require guidance on how to address the needs of children, specifically separate interventions targeting the needs of children, as well as mothers.

SafeShelter vision

All women’s shelters in the EU have child safeguarding policies in place to improve the protection and safety of children during their stay in the shelter

Besides the EFJCA other partners are the Austrian Women Shelter Network (project coordinator), Psytel (France), Gesine (Germany), and Conexus (Spain).