an INTERvention tooLkit to deal with women drug users victims of gEnder bAsed ViolEnce

ended

Women make up approximately a quarter of all people with serious drug problems and around one-fifth of all entrants to drug treatment in Europe. Among them, a high percentage are victims of GBV. Despite the increasing efforts and initiatives at local and international level to tackle this problem, too little is still being done to provide effective prevention and protection to reduce the vulnerability of women. This project aims to evaluate GBV experienced by the addicted women in the participating countries, as well as the best prevention and intervention practices, including an analysis of the existing shelter homes, in order to produce a model of intervention (a toolkit) that takes into account and optimize the already existing measures put in place. With a multi-level and an interdisciplinary approach, the project is designed to support civil society organizations by reinforcing their capacity to make a difference at local level and deliver better coordinated services. More specifically, the project will foresee an overall assessment of specific local initiatives performed by participating countries through literature review, structured questionnaires and focus groups to assess current tools for the active prevention of crime in favor of the empowerment of the affected women and identify best practices: best practices sharing will allow to improve performance by replicating successes throughout partner organizations, raise the overall quality of services offered to women with drug problems facing GBV and will also allow to avoid duplication and save costs through increased productivity and efficiency. The project will aim at producing a toolkit of intervention that will be first tested in the countries participating in the Project, meant to support the civil society organizations by reinforcing their (i) advocacy function, (ii) capacity to make a difference at the local level, (iii) best practice sharing methods.