The Association for Nonviolent Communication opened its first Safe House for Women and Children, Victims of Violence, in December 2004 and the second one in September 2008. Both safe houses are located in an undisclosed area in Ljubljana, which is of utmost importance for the safety of their residents.

Safe houses provides housing for eight adult women with or without children. Boys are accepted until they are 15 years old. The housing is limited to one year period. During their stay women are offered all the support they need to recover from their experience of violence. Women who decide to leave a violent partner are often confronted with different problems concerning divorce and child custody procedures, penal proceedings, job and apartment searching, etc. Moreover, they are confronted with threats to experience violence again. To overcome all these, professional workers of a safe house provide women with psychosocial help and support by.

When victims are not heard or are ignored in their distress, it is much less likely that it will not be taken care of their safety. In such cases, it is good to have the possibility of social advocacy.

Qualified counsellors of the Association perform social advocacy. They encourage clients to advocate for their rights and to collect as much information as possible. This gives them a feeling of power and control over the situation. When clients are unable to do it, a counsellor can help them.

When a counsellor provides social advocacy in cases of violence, she:

• Cooperates with centres for social work, schools, kindergartens, safe houses, maternity homes, crisis centres, retirement homes and other organizations.
• Informs centres for social work, schools, kindergartens, retirement homes, children homes and other organizations about specifics of situations involving violence. A counsellor presents a problem from the point of view of violence and encourages them not to ignore violence in procedures.
• Helps organizing a move from home to a safe accommodation when a victim cannot do it herself for different reasons (isolation, lack of information, age, immobility, illness, remoteness …) but wants to.
• Arranges oral hearings and other proceedings in a way that facilitates the involvement for the victim.
• Accompanies a victim to other organizations, to oral hearings and crisis teams.
• Helps a victim to gain legal information and organizes legal advocacy when clients are unable to do it for different reasons.
• Reports violence to centres for social work or to the police and gives written or verbal initiatives to centres for social work, prosecutor’s offices, and courts of justice to organize crisis teams, to accelerate the procedures or to study additional information.
• Writes and helps writing complaints about the minutes if there are neglected or incorrectly taken standpoints or words of a victim.
• Writes and helps writing complaints about the treatment of professional workers when working with victims.
• Warns ministries, human rights ombudsman and others about system deficiencies when solving a certain case of violence.

The program of accompaniment for victims of violence to procedures at different institutions (police, prosecutor’s office, court of justice and centres for social work) is one of the programs of the Association for Nonviolent Communication designed to increase safety of victims of violence.

Individuals have to deal with many procedures at different institutions to solve the problem of violence and to increase personal safety. Accompaniment of a support person is of the greatest importance for victims of violence, as it makes them feel safer and gives them support and power. This urges the procedures to end more quickly.

Accompaniment of a counsellor or a volunteer from the Association for Nonviolent Communication gives victims:

• Necessary information about legislation, procedures and institutions.
• Support to handle internal and external pressures easier.
• A chance to discuss their experience of the procedure right after it and to make a plan how to go further.

Individual counselling usually takes place once a week for one hour, but it can vary depending on personal needs and preferences. Process of counselling offers psychosocial help and support for victims of violence. It can be combined with social advocacy, accompaniment and other support services.