The “Justice and Consumers” Directorate-General of the European Commission has financed a European project submitted by the HOSPITALITY EUROPE office in Brussels, for child and adolescent victims of domestic violence. The application had been made in November and funding of EUR420,000 has been approved. This is the very first project to be coordinated by one of the Order’s European Centres under the EU Programme to assist victims and witnesses of domestic violence. For the project will be led by the St John of God Hospital in Barcelona and involve the Rome-based  Fatebenefratelli Foundation (Tiber Island), the St. Hedwig clinic of the St John of God Hospital in Regensburg, as well as the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome.

The project will take off after the summer, and will offer the opportunity to provide Europe-wide training for the health care personnel in the participating facilities, by sharing and enhancing their skills and capabilities to correctly detect cases where patients have developed behavioural or post-traumatic stress problems as a result of having been victims of or witnesses to domestic violence.

This kind of training is particularly important today in children’s psychiatry apartments and paediatric clinics, where it is increasingly more difficult to distinguish between cases of neurodevelopmental problems (such as the ADHD or hyperactivity-compulsivity) and post-traumatic behavioural reactions on the past of child victims or witnesses of violence.

In addition to improving the health care workers’ knowledge and skills in this field, the project will implement an appropriate support programme to meet the psychological-physical needs of the victims and their loved ones.  

The hospitals taking part in the project will also draft a protocol jointly with the Local Authorities to encourage people to report violence and ensure that increasingly more prompt action is taken by the judicial authorities in the countries concerned.