IPVoW Improving intervention in intimate partner violence against older women

This was an EU-funded research project which focused on the situation of elderly fe-male victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). Seven partners from six countries (Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom) with different welfare regimes and gender equality traditions carried out research on IPV against elderly women and develop recommendations for policy makers and service provid-ers for elderly female victims of domestic violence. The project runs for two years until 2010. Project partners were the University of Bialystok (Poland), the Academy of Science (Hungary), the University of Sheffield (UK), the Institute Cesis (Portugal), the Institute of Conflict Research (Austria), the German Police University (project management Prof. Thomas Görgen), and Zoom e.V. (Germany).

As a first step, every country performed a secondary data analysis and thereby compiled nationally available data from women's shelters, hotlines, victim's services, domestic violence intervention systems and police statistics. A standardized postal survey of victim's service institutions (women's shelters/refuges, hotlines, counselling systems, services for crime victims and victims of elder abuse, adult protection systems) have been used to collect data on institutional knowledge of the phenomenon and handling of cases but also as a screening instrument to detect organisations with case knowledge. On this basis, in every country 30 professionals with case knowledge have been interviewed. The survey and the interviews have been used as a starting point to get into contact with 10 victims of IPV as interview partners in every country. In the semistructured interviews with staff and victims, characteristics of victims and perpetrators, risk and protective factors, causes of abuse and dynamics and context of violent acts have been explored in detail. A special focus was put on help seeking behaviour, barriers for help seeking and gaps in existing support systems.

In each country, partners build or used existing national expert networks consisting of representatives of national organisations on violence against women, seniors' organisations, elder abuse organisations, law enforcement agencies, legislation, and policy makers. These experts facilitated the access to data for secondary data analysis (see above) and identified responses to IPV against elderly women and detect gaps in legislation and support systems and discuss the national need for future action on the topic.

At an international workshop, experts from EU-countries who do not participate in the project added expertise as regards current and future action on this issue in their countries and contributed to developing recommendations for prospective national and EU-activities. The partners in this project were nationally and internationally renowned scientists and very experienced in research on domestic violence, elder abuse and/or gerontology. All were interested in bringing together expertise from gerontological, criminological and domestic violence background and making it useable for the development of practice. All partners were closely linked to national and international networks of researchers and practitioners and took part in the development of policies. Associate partners are Prof. Zvi Eisikovits and Tova Band Winter-stein from University of Haifa, who enriched the research process and the discussion on future activities with his expertise on qualitative research on domestic violence against elderly women and on effective intervention systems.

The results of the project have been published at the end of 2010 in six national reports (in English and the respective languages of the project partners) and in a comprehensive overall report (in English). Go to Homepage

Contact: Barbara Nägele