Krizové centrum pro děti a mládež
Intervenční centrum pro oběti domácího násilí
SPONDEA is a public benefit corporation which operates two interconnected expert establishments – The Crisis Centre for Children and Youth and Intervention Centre for People Threatened with Domestic Violence.
The Organisation endeavours to improve life quality for children, their parents and close relatives and further for people who encountered any kind of domestic violence. The aim is to support people who found themselves in a difficult situation due to unfavourable circumstances and need to solve the problem and become a part of society again.
Organisation’s activities conducted in 2009
Organisation’s activities conducted in 2009
History
The Centre is administered by a non-profit beneficial organization SPONDEA established under a regional section of the Czech Red Cross in the municipality of Brno. The administrative authorities are the Board of Directors as a statutory body and the Advisory Board.
Since its foundation in 1998, the SPONDEA organization is already the fifth year devoted to the problem of abused, mistreated and distressed children and young people. The beginnings were extremely difficult. In 1998, the space for the offices and bedrooms was reconstructed under the sponsorship of a foreign foundation, but the equipment was missing and the facility had to be run from personal financial sources. Despite these difficulties, the 24-hour services were commenced already in November of that year, owing to a material benefaction. Three beds and a provisional equipage were available for the clients at the beginning.
During 1999, we gradually received awareness of public as well as specialists and the operation has become funded by the Municipality of the City of Brno. In the course of that year we managed to receive satisfactory equipment due to a targeted support from the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic, and a stable work team was established.
In the year 2000 we have been able to extend our services by special therapeutic techniques, and within the framework of health and social care, we could offer complex services and programmes to our clients in order to help them solve their personal situation. High standards of our services were corroborated by receiving an authorization for social and legal protection of children from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. In that year we also have made the psychiatric ambulance operational and thus obtained the status of a provider of non-governmental health services.
In 2001 we have extended our activities by introducing preventive and educational programmes carried out in primary schools. We also took part in the help to mothers with children in distress by offering them short-term asylum housing.
Years 2002 and 2003 were marked by improving our expert and special services, and on internal level by improving methodical procedures for work with the clients. The staff members have increased their expertise and skills by taking an active part in special courses and seminaries. Preventive and educational programme became regular activities of the Centre. Our successful and high quality work is evidenced by the fact that we are regularly visited by our professional colleagues from other regions, who intend to establish a similar facility based on requirements from statutory authorities in the relevant towns. They are seeking advice and help in establishing their own facility, methodology, concepts, etc.
There were some important changes in 2004. Organization has moved to the new premises – three-floored villa with the garden in the quiet town district rented by the municipality. We moved to the new place during the summer, but the operation was not interrupted. The new premises were reconstructed and they were finished in the end of September . It allowed to separate asylum housing from the ambulatory centre. More over, we could have built the midway-housing (supported housing) situated in the ground-floor, where the first client has started to reside from November.
The Accreditation of the social service “crisis help” by the Director of the Regional Authority of the South Moravian Region was very important event in 2005. This accreditation had started the process of the accreditation of other social services which was successfully finished in 2007. The first project financed from the EU funds has begun also in 2005.
There was another important change in 2006 when the new project DONA Centre Brno started in Spondea from the 1st of September. DONA Centre was the pilot project focused on the problematic of a home violence. Spondea began to be one of the most important organizations engaged in the field of the home violence solving in the South Moravian Region. DONA Centre has been followed with the project Domestic Violence Intervention Centre started from the 1st of January 2007 in connection with the amendatory Social Services Act and the new Institute of eviction of the aggressor. The model for that project is the Austrian model of intervention in domestic violence cases.
Spondea celebrated the 10th anniversary of its foundation in 2008. A collection containing articles and papers both by our Organisation’s experts and specialists or the Brno City representatives was published on the occasion of the anniversary. A concert by the Kantilena highlighted the festive occasion.
We have been focusing on strengthening of the family role through working with the whole family, not only the closest family members of a child since 2008 and that has been our policy especially for the year 2009. Above all within the problem of domestic violence we attempt to support and strengthen the relationship between a child and a threatened parent and we endeavour to reinforce relationships among all family members altogether within the crisis help for families in distress. That is the reason why we have incorporated mediation and family therapy, realization of assisted contacts of parents and their children and supporting therapeutic techniques into our organization’s offers.
Crisis Centre
The Crisis Centre offers psychological care, supportive therapeutic activities such as canistherapy and dance therapy, social-law counselling, family therapy and mediation to children, adolescents and their parents.
607 new clients visited the Crisis Centre and other 30 clients were recorded from the previous years in 2008.
The Crisis Centre’s expert worker team consists of 4 psychologists, 4 social workers, 1 special educator and 5 crisis workers.
Crisis help by means of crisis intervention is essential in cases of traumatic events such as parents’ or a friend’s death, then in cases when study requirements may seem unmanageable after starting study at secondary school or university and when depression, self-injury or suicidal thoughts in students may possibly occur. When the psychologist manages to intervene in time, the child’s or adolescent’s unfavourable state does not last long and it is possible to prevent them from post-traumatic stress disorder and development of any kind of addiction or depression.
We offer immediate help on our non-stop crisis helpline within the phone crisis help. Further, we provide chat counselling to which we developed new methodology and new rules during the year 2008. We are going to offer our own chat connection through web pages in the next year, which will guarantee our clients more safety when communicating their intimate information.
We offer basic psychological and social-law counselling also via our Internet helpline. …. clients wrote us in 2008.
Social activate services for families with children noted an increase in clients especially in the area of assisted contacts in 2008. The service concerns arranging contacts between a child and his parent who does not have custody of the child or with whom the child does not share his home. We re-established cooperation with judges of the city family court and we prepared new methodology which enabled us to satisfy a greater number of people interested in the service, then to work more effectively and also to work on the basis of agreement with parents and social-law institutions of children legal protection not only further to adjudications. Assisted child handovers in the Crisis Centre may follow the assisted contacts.
Through the service we help children and their parents in difficult and critical life situations, such as divorce and post-divorce problems, problems concerning start of the kindergarten or elementary school attendance, problems with bullying, behavioural problems which might actually be the child’s calling for help and may reflect a family state, further with death in the family, self-injury, eating disorders, depression, child neglecting and abusing or domestic violence in the family.
33 children were placed in the Institution for Children Requiring Immediate Help in 2008. Out of the total number, 18 of them by OSPOD’s request (Institution of Social-Law Child Protection), 10 by parents’ request, 5 by their own request. A permanent psychologist works with children who stay. The psychologist has regular consultations and monitors their psychic state. A permanent social worker deals with other institutions and watches the case development, deals with the child’s parents and attempts to motivate them to visit their child and to further activities such as seeking a job, accommodation or processing of social benefits which would secure the child’s arrival back home.
The most common problems our clients approach us for:
-
Family problems – divorce and post-divorce situation when the child becomes a means of blackmailing or of settling a score between the parents, domestic violence problems, neglecting, tormenting, child sexual abusing, children’s running away from home
-
Adolescents’ personal problems – partner relationship worries, anxieties, depression, self-injury, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts
-
Problems at school – poor marks, bullying, truancy
-
Children’s and adolescents’ behavioural problems – parents usually come to counsel, however, secondary school or university students ask for advice too, teachers or social workers seek information over the phone
Overview of number of clients and interventions in the past years:
| year 1998 | 40 new clients | 70 interventions in a crisis |
| year 1999 | 186 new clients | 675 interventions |
| year 2000 | 254 new clients | 920 interventions |
| year 2001 | 343 new clients | 1189 interventions |
| year 2002 | 414 new clients | 1669 interventions |
| year 2003 | 406 new clients | 1793 interventions |
| year 2004 | 381 new clients | 2385 interventions |
| year 2005 | 540 new clients | 2385 interventions |
| year 2006 | 798 new clients | 3319 interventions |
| year 2007 | 697 new clients | 3594 interventions |
| year 2008 | 806 new clients | 3659 interventions |
Cooperation with schools
We appealed to more than 600 elementary and secondary school pupils and students not only in Brno and its surroundings but also in other South-Moravian regions through preventive programmes in 2008. The preventive programmes targeted on individual class groups are based on themes which occur most commonly in solving our clients’ cases, e.g. family problems, relationship problems, tormenting.
Expert involvement
A psychologist represented our Organisation with her paper ‘Virtual Communication in Crisis Services’ at a national conference named Internet Counselling 2008. Other experts participated in a national seminar of Child in Crisis on theme ‘Family, Children and Violence…’ organised on the occasion of 48th year of the Film Festival Zlin 2008. The Organisation’s director participates regularly in a programme of further education of health service workers through her lectures especially on CAN syndrome and domestic violence.
Cooperation with the public
Cooperation with the expert public lay in round-table interchange of information, seminars, discussions and further within the scope of solving individual clients’ cases. The lay public was appealed among others during an open day or within The Brno Healthy City Project campaign.
Future prospects
Extending work with families is the aim of the year 2009. We want to concentrate particularly on family therapy development and development of mediation which is essential for family relationship improvement. It is advisable to work professionally with the whole family when a child has a problem. We want to develop further supportive therapeutic activities, such as dance therapy, artetherapy and group therapy for children coming from families where domestic violence occurs. We are preparing new web pages and we are going to present our work results at international events abroad.
Intervention Centre
The Intervention Centre is a social service which aims to help and support people threatened with domestic violence. The Intervention Centre is a successional establishment of DONA Centre in Brno, whose activity was started in September 2006. The change of its name to the Intervention Centre came on 1st January 2007 when Social Services Act no. 108/2006 Coll. together with Act no. 135/2006 Coll. became operative. The latter changed several laws in the field of protection from domestic violence. All people regardless their age, sex or citizenship who encounter domestic violence in all its phases can approach the Intervention Centre Spondea o.p.s. The Intervention Centre Spondea o.p.s. services are also meant for people close to victims of domestic violence or for people who witnessed domestic violence but not for violent people. The aim is to provide protection for people threatened with domestic violence and support them in achieving life without violence. The goal of activities targeted on the general public is interconnection and cooperation among institutions which take part in solving cases of domestic violence in particular South-Moravian regions through interdisciplinary cooperation.
The Intervention Centre expert worker team consists of 2 psychologists, 4 social workers, 1 lawyer and 4 crisis workers.Expert involvement
The Intervention Centre is one of the founding members of the Intervention Centre Workers Association. The Association unites 15 intervention centres functioning in all regions of the Czech Republic and its primary task is to protect and promote its members’ expert and legislative interests in issues related to providing services for people threatened with domestic violence. The Intervention Centre coordinator is a member of the Association Board.
The Organisation’s director is a member of The Domestic Violence Prevention Committee in The Government Council for Equal Opportunities for Women and Men and thus she participates actively in preparation of The National Action Plan for Fight against Domestic Violence.
The Intervention Centre organized an expert seminar with a panel discussion in December on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The seminar focused on protecting people threatened with domestic violence among foreigners living in the Czech Republic and protecting children as witnesses or victims of domestic violence.
The Intervention Centre workers took part in a conference organised by the CEELI Institute in Prague on theme ‘Domestic Violence in Context of Social Problems and Judicial Code Transformation in the Czech and Slovak Republic’.
Statistic
| Cases solved in 2008
TP = a person threatened with domestic violence A = abuser |
||
| clients | evicted people | clients coming of their own will |
| the total number | 72 | 321 |
| - woman TPs out of the number | 67 | 303 |
| - man TPs out of the number | 5 | 18 |
Relationship between TP/A |
||
| - married couples | 30 | 199 |
| - partners | 21 | 56 |
| - major child/parent | 19 | 33 |
| - minor child/parent | 0 | 1 |
| - divorced couples | 1 | 15 |
| - brothers and sisters | 0 | 2 |
| - others/ unknown | 0 | 15 |
threatened persons’ age |
||
| - to 30 years | 15 | 63 |
| - to 50 years | 37 | 126 |
| - to 70 years | 16 | 34 |
| - over 71 years | 4 | 9 |
| - age unknown | 0 | 90 |
abusers’ age |
||
| - to 30 years | 12 | 24 |
| - to 50 years | 51 | 155 |
| - to 70 years | 9 | 32 |
| - over 71 years | 0 | 2 |
| - age unknown | 0 | 108 |
others |
||
| disabled threatened persons | 7 | 17 |
| number of cases/families where a minor child occurred | 45fam./80chil. | 160fam./240chil. |
in the asylum housing |
||
| major persons | 0 | 9 |
| parents with children
mothers/children |
0 | 14mothers/19chil. |
| contacts altogether | outpatient contacts out of the total | telephone contacts out of the total | field contacts out of the total | e-mail/letter contacts out of the total |
| 1542 | 483 | 981 | 8 | 70 |
| with clients/ vocational | with clients/vocational | with clients/vocational | with clients/vocational | with clients/vocational |
| 1347/195 | 478/5 | 819/162 | 8/0 | 42/28 |
Recorded cases of domestic violence in the organisation´s history |
||||||
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
6 |
34 |
25 |
58 |
133 |
372 |
393 |
Cooperation with the public
Cooperation with the expert public lay in interchange of information within meeting coordination among seven interdisciplinary teams functioning in the whole South-Moravian Region. The Intervention Centre initiated fourteen meetings altogether and as members we participated in eight interdisciplinary team meetings. The team is organized by the Health department of the Brno City Municipality.
In cooperation with interdisciplinary team members we managed to establish detached advice bureaus of the Intervention Centre in Znojmo, Veseli nad Moravou and Breclav. The detached advice bureaus are available for the public in each town once a month. A social worker and a lawyer offer clients their help; it is necessary to arrange a meeting by telephone beforehand.
The lay public was appealed among others during an open day or within The Brno Healthy City Project campaign. We organized an event called ‘There Is No Place for Violence in the Relationship’, which was focused on searching for domestic violence warning indications at the beginning of a woman-man relationship.
Future prospects
We want to pay particular attention to help people threatened with domestic violence among foreigners who live in the Czech Republic in 2009. We started international cooperation with other five European countries for this reason. We are going to set up outpatient counselling in Russian and we are going to prepare publicity materials for people who speak Russian, English and Vietnamese.
We are preparing a comprehensive education programme with a textbook for health service workers on domestic violence problems.
International Cooperation
Programme of international cooperation within the scope of care about persons threatened with domestic violence among immigrants living in the Czech Republic.
OP Human Resources and Employment
GG 5.1. International Cooperation Project number: CZ.1.04/5.1.01/12.00046 Name of the project: Stop domestic violence in communities of people from different ethnics - establishing new methods and policies as a result of the cooperation with the EU countries Realization time of the project: 1/6/09 – 30/4/12The project target group embraces foreign families living in the Czech Republic who are threatened with domestic violence, children witnessing domestic violence inclusive. The project responds to work experience with the target group, to changes in our society, development of multicultural environment and increasing number of national minorities in the Czech Republic.
At the present time there are no typical means of helping people of various ethnic groups threatened with domestic violence in the Czech Republic. Current legislation solves the problem of domestic violence, however, it is hardly applicable to the target group for the time being. We are going to draw inspiration from an international partnership and apply our gained practical experience to the target group in our circumstances regarding our legislation. We are going to do so through professional study visits at our partnership organizations which have been highly successful in working with the target group. It will be possible to discuss the theme with members from various organizations operating in the EU.Main project contributions include gaining good practice from EU countries where the system of help for foreigners threatened with domestic violence works, naming spheres which need improvement, better awareness in our professional community of the problem’s seriousness and of ways it can be solved, transferring democratic values such as equal approach and equal treatment in immigrant communities in the Czech Republic, establishing cooperation with organizations which work with foreigners and can detect a threatened person, knowledge improvement among the organization’s employees concerning the so called multicultural empathy skill, knowledge improvement concerning operating methods with persons threatened with domestic violence in social workers who help the foreigners.
Project aims:
I. Creating of an operating methodology solving the problem of foreigners living in the Czech Republic and their children who are threatened with domestic violence. Creating of the operating methodology requires communication with foreign subjects from EU countries where good practice exists, the organization’s employees’ foreign study visits and transferring good practice to the Czech Republic. The operating methodology will be presented in a form of a printed material and a teaching CD.
II. Implementation of the operating methodology in the system of work with threatened persons – transferring good practice through interdisciplinary teams and lectures, workshops, the organization’s employees creating teaching programme units.
III. Specific psychological, social-law and law services for people of the target group, creating multilingual information materials and web pages focused on particular foreigner communities according to their cultural specificity.
The project will be realized 35 months. It is divided into two phases – transferring of good practice from EU countries (17 months) and implementing of new operating methods in the Czech Republic (18 months). Planned outcomes: 5500 supported persons, 500 trained persons, and 4 established partnerships.Project partners:
TIYE International, Utrecht, Holland.
A non-governmental umbrella organization which covers 21 national organizations engaged in helping refugee women living in Holland. Its main aim is to solve the problem of domestic violence in immigrant communities.
www.tiye-international.orgAPAV Lisbon, Portugal.
APAV is a Portuguese association which supports victims of domestic violence. The association is a non-profit organization which grants victims of violence services free of charge. It commands 15 workplaces within its national network which are supported by 250 volunteers. APAV made a handbook providing the reader with information on how to proceed in supporting victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse, violence on children and senior citizens.
Interventionsstelle Wien, Austria.
Vienna intervention centre is a pioneer in solving the problem of domestic violence in Austria and it is a co-creator of a law which attempts to resolve the problem of domestic violence. The Austrian model was implemented in the Czech Republic in years 2004 – 2006.
www.interventionsstelle-wien.atFIM Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
FIM has been dealing with the problem of women immigrants for 25 years. The organization is a part of a network of European institutions which work with immigrants. It contributes socially to the fight against violence on women and supports multicultural integrative politics.
www.fim-frauenrecht.deSpacio Famiglia and Centro Pari Opportunita
Spacio Famiglia and Centro Pari Opportunita in the province of Arezzo in Tuscany are other cooperating organizations.
Spacio Famiglia is a counselling establishment the founder of which is the local authority of Arezzo. The establishment offers professional social counselling, counselling and professional psychological help for children who suffer from child abuse and neglect, family mediation, arranges temporary adoption into families by reason of difficult situations in the original family, solves the problem of domestic violence and runs a helpline for children. spaziofamiglia@inwind.it
Centro Pari Opportunita is a non-state counselling establishment for victims of crime, especially of domestic violence. The establishment operates asylum housing with a secret address for victims of domestic violence. www.didonne.it
We have visited two partnership organizations in Italy. We discussed the problem of immigrants threatened with domestic violence with academic workers of Roma Tre University. Our gained knowledge serves as a part of bases for treating the operating methodology with foreigners living in the Czech Republic and their children who are threatened with domestic violence.
Study visit to Viena
Another foreign study visit was realized from 11th to 13th of January 2010 within the scope of the project when four of our workers went to Vienna.
The first arranged visit was in the organisation Austrian Women’s Shelters Network, where we obtained valuable information on running asylum housing in Austria. We had a discussion with the director of the centre, which unites most of Austrian women’s shelters and runs a multilingual helpline and chat counselling. The organisation is the focal point of the European network WAVE. We were interested in possible promotional ways of a foreign language helpline and to be more specific, our aim was to learn about the number of foreigners using women’s shelters and how and where foreigners receive information on social services. All the information obtained is to be used when creating methodology of work with minorities in the Czech Republic.
The helpline service was first provided 11 years ago and the helpline has been available for free 24 hours a day since then. It became international in 2005 using a number of languages to communicate with clients. We learnt that it had taken several years before the helpline began being used by foreigners. The helpline uses native speakers – psychologists and social workers.
Chat counselling is another service which is provided 3 hours once a week. An unlimited number of clients can use chat at the same time. A chatting worker chooses one of them and discusses her problem with her. Other chatting participants chat with one another as a self-help group. Eight chatting clients use the service at one time on average.
Clients are provided with the above mentioned asylum housing for a year. They are offered legal aid and a psychologist’s or social worker’s support during the stay. The clients have an opportunity to get an inexpensive council flat after leaving the women’s shelter. The City of Vienna gives flats to victims of domestic violence preferentially.
The Intervention Centre Vienna was another place we visited. The Intervention Centre has been providing victims of domestic violence and their families with help for 13 years now and it has been dealing with foreigners for 10 years. The Intervention Centre has 35 employees some of whom work exclusively with ethnic minorities and come from migrants themselves. Consultations are realized in clients’ mother tongues and in German when necessary. Foreigners learn of the help mostly through welcome cards which the aliens’ registration office has at their disposal.
All the Intervention Centre’s employees provide the clients with same services in a form of professional social-legal counselling. Moreover, a psychologist offers crisis intervention, a lawyer helps the clients in filing preliminary regulations, with complaints and other petitions including presenting a case.
Since the Act on Protection against Domestic Violence in the Czech Republic had originated on the strength of the Austrian model, we were interested in finding out information on how the institute of ejection functions in Vienna and what the following success of extending the ejection is. The violent person is ejected for 14 days in Austria, this being a rule since 2009. The ejection is usually extended for a month or for a half of a year maximum and for a year in special cases only. There were 4000 ejections and 2000 applications to the court in Vienna in 2009.
We were given several tips on conferences and interesting seminars at the end of our visit.
Study visit to Frankfurt
We visited our partnership organisation FIM in Frankfurt from 1st to 3rd March. We collected much information concerning services which FIM provides for migrants. They vary from teaching German to accompanying clients at the authorities. FIM also cooperates on a project which helps migrants in finding a job. Domestic violence is one of the problems which people can solve there.
There were more than 100 cases of domestic violence in people coming from different ethnic groups in 2009 – victims in most of them were women: 126 women, 8 men.
FIM workers consider a legislative regulation which requires 2 years of marriage as a condition for becoming a permanent resident in Germany as one of the biggest problems. It often means an obstacle in ending a violent relationship.
Most of FIM clients are women but the services are available for men as well. People from Eastern Europe – Bulgaria, Romania – make up the greatest proportion at the present time. FIM is one of the crucial points of work with migrants in Frankfurt – we learnt that a network which provides foreigners with services and support is interconnected on a very high level. FIM cooperates with the police, social workers work with foreigners’ children and their families.
A great deal of social workers who work with clients in FIM come from a foreign country too, thus, knowledge of foreign languages and cultural background of countries most of the clients come from is of a great advantage.
In case the workers do not speak the language the client does, it is no problem to find an interpreter in a short period of time.
Provided services are free, only teaching German is paid. FIM puts their clients in contact with lawyers if necessary (the lawyers speak the client’s mother tongue if possible). FIM attempts to make the lawyer’s help affordable.
We were acquainted with a project called LAiF – Live and Work in Frankfurt (Leben und Arbeiten in Frankfurt). The main aim of the project is to help people who arrived to Frankfurt from a different country but find it difficult to live there because of various reasons such as lack of information or qualification and unfamiliarity with the foreign language. The project is promoted through leaflets (at lawyers, centres for foreigners, aliens’ registration office) and the project workers assist at cooperating establishments.
We also visited asylum housing with a hidden address – workers here can speak a number of languages as well but are not professionally trained. A well-functioning network of contacts is perceived as very important, e.g. former clients are often used as interpreters. The workers from the asylum housing cooperate with the police, lawyers and other establishments offering counselling services and preventive activity. For instance when the police are called to an incident, they ask the woman to sign a permission according to which they can convey information to the asylum housing through which the woman will be contacted.
We had also meeting at the police headquarters, and with a lawyer.
Lisbon
We visited our partnership organisation APAV in Portugal in Lisbon from 1st to 6th May. Meeting colleagues from other cooperating organisations – UMAR and JRS – was a part of the visit.
APAV unites a training centre and 15 local branches all over Portugal. A large number of volunteers participate in their work.
They have been working with migrants since 2005. The basis of their work is to provide people who come asking for help with relevant information. They use volunteers as interpreters but they often consider if presence of an interpreter during a consultation does not limit their clients’ trust. We appreciate a discussion about how to inform persons in danger of domestic violence about possible help.
JRS is a catholic international organisation which has been working with migrants since 2000. A lawyer, psychologist, social worker and two doctors work in the organisation as volunteers. All services are free of charge. Legal help is provided mostly for illegal migrants. The organisation does not focus directly on domestic violence. If they assume that their client is in danger of domestic violence, they inform him about his rights and teach him how to recognise that domestic violence is the case in his family.
Research is an important part of work in JRS. Professionals from the organisation investigate the difference between practice and the rule of law. They write articles on missing protection of victims of domestic violence. They warn about secondary victimisation of victims of domestic violence who decide to seek help, however, it is impossible to help them because of a law barrier which disadvantages foreigners. Disclosure of illegal residence may lead to such a problem.
UMAR is an organisation fighting for women’s rights which helps victims of crime, human trafficking included. It offers crisis help and long-term help focused on gaining a residence permit.
Visiting asylum housing with a hidden address was a part of the study visit. The director of the asylum housing explained to us the way they work with clients and their children. The fact that contents of daily programmes and their themes which they use during group work are modified according to the relevant make-up of their clients was very interesting.
ACIDI (Alto Comissariado para a Imigração e Diálogo Intercultural, www.acidi.gov.pt)
Another facility we visited was a public governmental institution which provides migrants with complete social and legal services. The main principle is ‘to provide services under one roof’. People can deal here with all matters concerning their coming and residence in a foreign country.
Utrecht
We realised a study visit in Holland in Utrecht from 26th to 29th May. We were invited to a local police station where we met a team of people who deal with domestic violence in all its complexity. Police representatives and representatives of Vie Ja, an organisation which coordinates care in cases of domestic violence, introduced their system to us. We discussed details and differences in our attitudes to prevention or solutions of cases of domestic violence – there are no intervention centres in Holland as they are in the Czech Republic. Organisations such as Vie Ja partially substitute their function which is to coordinate help for people who are in danger of domestic violence. They work with victims as well as with abusers and understand the problem of domestic violence as an intergenerational one. They attempt to prevent domestic violence, to stop repeating it and to educate the public. A chairman of a municipal council has the authority to evict an abuser from their common residence. Services for people in danger are offered directly in their households where the team of professionals meet.
Regarding special characteristics of work with people coming from a different socio-cultural environment, we discussed problems of honour crimes, which was a very interesting part of the visit. Policemen in Holland are given special instructions on what to do in cases when they go to such incidents. They are instructed what to do and say and what to avoid. It is essential to consider every possible solution in similar cases since eviction might make the whole situation even worse among the victim’s broader family. A national team of experts is available to answer any questions related to specific features of a particular foreign culture.
Colleagues from Holland corroborated the experience from other countries which shows that domestic violence is not to be the first topic of a conversation. It is advisable to start a discussion about other themes, to help solve other problems as well and attempt to mention the problem of domestic violence later on. Furthermore, we discussed a legislative setting and asylum policy in Holland.
Another part of the visit was a meeting with colleagues from the organisation Tiye International. It is an organisation which coordinates 21 branches. The organisation works with various ethnic groups and their form of work includes seminars, training and fieldwork. The organisation attempts to support a proper function of the family as prevention of possible problems. Domestic violence is one of themes in which the organisation is engaged within the scope of a special project.
Annual Reports
Annual Report 2008file: Adobe Reader(.pdf) |
Annual Report 2009file: Adobe Reader(.pdf) |
Contacts
Spondea při ČČK Brno, o.p.s. Address: Sýpka 25, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic Phone/fax: +420 541 213 732 E-mail: spondea@spondea.cz www.spondea.czCrisis Centre Nonstop phone: +420 541 235 511, +420 608 118 088 E-mail: krizovapomoc@spondea.cz Chat: www.chat.spondea.cz www.spondea.cz
Intervention Centre Nonstop phone: +420 739 078 078 Phone: +420 544 501 121 Fax: +420 544 526 561 E-mail: ic-brno@spondea.cz Chat: www.chat.ic-brno.cz www.ic-brno.cz