28th September 2023
Since the middle of September, methodological advice on how to provide services to women with disabilities have been available to Lithuanian institutions providing support to victims of domestic violence.
The methodological advice has been put together in special information packages. Around 400 of such packages will be sent to Lithuanian Specialised Comprehensive Assistance Centres (SCACs) and Social Service Centres (SSCs).
A European Parliament resolution on the situation of women with disabilities points out that women with disabilities or health problems are 2-5 times more likely to be victims of violence than other women.
A review by the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson (the Office) has shown that SCACs and SSCs may lack knowledge on how to organise disability-sensitive support. For example, how to provide counselling, temporary accommodation and other services for women with mobility, hearing, visual, intellectual or psychosocial disabilities. The dissemination of information packages throughout Lithuania should help to fill this gap.
Mintautė Jurkutė, an expert of the Office and the author of the afore-mentioned review, hopes that the recommendations will be useful for hard-working professionals. ‘In our work practice, we see that the individual needs of people with disabilities are often not taken into account when providing any commercial or public services. These needs are very different, so knowledge of the specific nature of disability-related service provision is not self-evident. Employees of institutions providing support face very difficult situations on a daily basis, and I hope that the structured advice, which has been put together, will help them to support their customers with disabilities,’ she says.
Different organisations of people with disabilities were actively consulted in the preparation of the recommendations. Methodological advice on how to provide services to women with different disabilities is also published on the website “Visureikalas.lt”.
The information packages were prepared in the framework of the project “Seen: Focus on Violence Against Women with Disabilities”. The project is implemented by the Centre for Equality Advancement, the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson, the mental health non-governmental organisation Mental Health Perspectives and the social advertising agency Nomoshiti.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Council of Europe. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.