Emergency services

Concept: Emergency support services are services primarily addressed to women survivors of IPV. They are provided by specialised staff within the emergency services in hospitals, or within social services teams that provide immediate support such as accommodation and special proactive or mobile psychosocial support. In this section, women’s shelters which provide emergency accommodation are also considered. A broader description and numbers were provided in Section 2.3.4.

Data overview: Twelve Member States (BE, EL, ES, FR, IT, CY, LU, MT, AT, SI, FI, UK) and Croatia offer specialised emergency services for women survivors of IPV. The remaining 15 Member States do not provide such services (Annex III, Table 2.4).

Figure 2.3.4: Emergency services for women in the EU-27 and Croatia, 2012

Source: Data collected through the online questionnaire, March–April 2012, reviewed November 2012.

EU-27 HR

Services in hospital Emergency

accommodation Mobile psychosocial support Type of emergency services

Number of countries

Of the 17 Member States with national women’s helplines, the majority had publically available statistics on the number of calls made to those helplines (DK, IE, EL, ES, FR, IT, CY, LT, LU, HU, AT, SI, SK, FI). Such statistics were not available for Estonia. In Sweden and the United Kingdom, not all helplines had data available. The statistics provided were either from 2010 or 2011. In Sweden, the data available for one of the women’s helplines was from 2007–08.

Twelve women’s helplines are run by NGOs, being fully or partially funded by the state (DK, EE, IE, FR, CY, LT, HU, AT, SI, SK, FI, UK). In Luxembourg and Sweden, where women’s helplines are provided by both the state and NGOs, the helplines are also fully funded by the state. In three Member States, the national women’s helplines are run and fully funded by the state (EL, ES, IT). Of the helplines run

by NGOs, five are fully funded (DK, IE, FR, LT, AT), or receive partial funding from the state (EE, CY, HU, FI, UK). Slovenia and Slovakia have no data available on funding for women’s helplines.

In the Member States where data on the total number of callers were available, nine Member States have data on the number of women callers (IE, EL, ES, FR, IT, CY, LU, AT, SK) or the share of women callers (FI). Between 57 % and 100 % are female callers. In seven Member States, it was possible to identify women callers as survivors of IPV or DV (IE: 97 %;

EL: 57 %; ES: 70 %; FR: 83 %; IT: approximately 85 %; CY: 75 %;

LU: 97 %; AT: 85 %; SK: 100 %; FI: 99 %). In addition to calls from women survivors of violence, helplines also take calls from family or friends of victim and from professionals seeking advice to deal with survivors.

2.3.3 24-hour hotlines

Concept: A national women’s helpline for women survivors of IPV is a helpline operating nationally and serving only, or primarily, women survivors of IPV. The helpline provides women with counselling, crisis intervention, online safety planning and referral to relevant agencies, referring other callers experiencing IPV to the relevant support agencies and providing advice on appropriate support agencies to family and friends. Helplines that are not trained to serve women survivors of IPV were not included. The helplines for all forms of VAW or national DV helplines that serve primarily women survivors were included. We consider that these types of helplines can respond to the needs of women survivors of IPV well (⁶⁸). Helplines, as services to protect women from IPV, need to be gender-specific and specialised, so as to be ‘tailored to specific needs, which may be complex, of service users’ (CoE, 2008b: 28).

This indicator measures the availability of easily accessible information and advice specialised for women survivors of IPV.

Data overview: Seventeen Member States have national women’s helplines that provide assistance at least in the area of IPV and/or DV (DK, EE, IE, EL, ES, FR, IT, CY, LT, LU, HU, AT, SI, SK, FI, SE, UK (⁶⁹)). In Lithuania and Sweden, there are two helplines that qualify as women’s helplines.

Ten Member States (BE, BG, CZ, DE, LV, MT, NL, PL, PT, RO) and Croatia do not have a national women’s helpline (Annex III, Table 2.5).

Only half of the identified women’s helplines operate on 24/7 basis (DK, EL, ES, IT, AT, SK, SE, UK). In 12 Member States, the national women’s helplines are free (DK, IE, ES, IT, CY, LT, HU, AT, SI, FI, SE, UK) (Figure 2.3.5).

Figure 2.3.5: Women’s helplines in the EU-27 and Croatia, 2012

Source: Data collected through the online questionnaire, March–April 2012, reviewed November 2012.

17

Women’s helplines exist Operate 24/7 Free of charge Funded by state Meet the basic minimum requirements

Number of countries

EU-27 HR

Where general helpline information was available, they were mostly trafficking helplines or helplines for victims of all crimes. Fourteen Member States (CZ, DK, EE, EL, ES, IT, CY, LV, AT, PL, PT, RO, SI, UK) and Croatia have national trafficking helplines. In seven Member States (EL, ES, IT, CY, AT, PT, RO) and Croatia, the helplines are available 24/7, and in eight Member States (CZ, DK, EE, IT, LV, AT, RO, SI) and Croatia, they are free of charge. Trafficking helplines appear not to be helpful in assisting survivors of IPV as the call volume is low (in LV, 96 calls in 2010). In Romania, despite the high volume of calls, none were from survivors of IPV/DV (2 830 in 2010 and 2 183 in 2011).

In 14 Member States, there are helplines for victims of all crimes (in BG, CZ, DK, IE, CY, MT, NL, AT, PT, SI, SK, FI, SE, UK).

In eight Member States (BG, CZ, DK, CY, MT, AT, SI, SE), the helplines are available 24/7, and in 10 Member States (BG,

DK, IE, CY, MT, AT, SI, SK, SE, UK), they are free of charge (Figure 2.3.6). Where statistics on the number of calls from women survivors of IPV/DV was available, it showed that 50 % and 76 % respectively were calls from women survivors of IPV/DV (in 2010, CZ and SK; in 2011, in SI, only 3 123 calls (0.6 %) from a total of 522 162 were from women survivors of IPV/DV).

There is not a significant number of national helplines for victims of stalking and so-called honour crimes: Italy has a national stalking helpline and Denmark has so-called honour crimes helplines while the United Kingdom has both. Also, in five Member States (IE, MT, PT, SE, UK), national LBT helplines are available (Figure 2.3.7). No data on the number of calls from women survivors of IPV is available for any of these helplines.

General helplines

In almost all Member States (except BE, DE, FR) and Croatia, there are national general helplines (BE and DE have regional and local women’s helplines). These general helplines are not gender-specific as they do not assist women survivors of violence or specifically DV. Therefore, the needs of women survivors of IPV or DV are not met by having only general helplines. At the moment, this is the situation in eight Member States (BG, CZ, LV, MT, NL, PL, PT, RO) and Croatia where there are only general helplines — no women’s helplines exist. In Belgium and Germany, there are no women’s helplines and also no general helplines but in Belgium, local level helplines are provided by crisis centres and shelters and in Germany, women’s helplines are just in development and were not yet open in the data collection period.

In 2010, the helpline for all victims of violence in the Czech Republic assisted 7 898 callers in total, with approximately half coming from women survivors of IPV/DV. In Latvia, the general helpline received 2 875 total calls, where only 202 calls regarded cases of IPV. In Malta, there were 10 868 calls received by general national helpline in total, of which only 465 calls related to DV. This suggests that a specialised and targeted helpline is necessary as survivors of DV are unlikely to call helplines unrelated to their situation. For general DV helplines, not gender-specific, call statistics are as follows: in Poland, the Blue Line received 11 228 calls in 2010; in Portugal, the DV line received 1 632 calls in 2011, of which 1 501 were from women. No data is available for the helpline in Bulgaria and the Netherlands.

Figure 2.3.6: General helplines that also cater for women survivors of IPV in the EU-27 and Croatia, 2012

Source: Data collected through the online questionnaire, March–April 2012, reviewed November 2012.

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helplines exist Operate 24/7 Free of charge Helpline for all victims of crime

exist

Operate 24/7 Free of charge

Trafficking helplines Helpline for all victims of crime

Number of countries

EU-27 HR

Data source: Primary data collected through the online questionnaire, March–April 2012; the data has been through several stages of review by the governments of the Member States: the latest being in November 2012.

Conclusions: National women’s helplines provide crucial help and support to women escaping IPV, offering advice and information for their immediate safety and protection.

Identified as critical for women in rural areas (CoE, 2008b:

28), the provision of one national women’s helpline is considered to be a minimum level of provision in a country (⁷⁰). It is essential that helplines are gender-specific and specialised in order to deliver the quality of service required in supporting the complex needs of women calling the service.

The established quality standards for helplines request that these are free, operate 24/7, provide multilingual support and are specialised for women survivors of IPV. They also need to have personnel that are able to address women’s problems in a manner that recognises the gendered nature of violence and have the necessary knowledge regarding regional provisions and legal measures available. The existence of such helplines should be advertised widely to ensure that the population is aware of their existence and availability.

The helplines of only six Member States meet the basic minimum requirements for national women’s helplines (DK, ES, IT, AT, SE, UK).

A national women’s helpline is a key support service for women and the extent and quality of such provision is a good indicator of victim support. To improve data collection, helplines should keep statistics on the number of calls answered in relation to the number of calls received and the number of women callers. Keeping track of the

category of callers is also helpful to ensure the needs of the target group are being met. This will assist governments in establishing the level of need and if the helpline capacity is sufficient. Collecting data on the amount spent by government to fund the helpline will ensure that funding becomes regularised, hence ensuring the continuity of this indispensable specialised service. Member States that do not have national women’s helplines should consider the provision of this service as a particular and high priority (⁷¹).