Project description

The goal of the project is to improve the effectiveness, appropriateness, and humanity of sexual assault services by reviewing current practice and taking on board user attitudes to interventions following sexual assault, and therefore decrease the social, mental and health harm caused to the victims of sexual assault.

The main objectives of the project are:

1. To define the evidence base of programmes for dealing with sexual assault by reviewing the international literature.
2. To explore what models of interventions for victims of sexual assualt there are in EU Member States and EFTA/EEA countries.
3. To examine the impact of these models of intervention on the health, social and criminal justice outcomes of victims of sexual assault and working at community level to identify the positive and negative impacts of the interventions from the point of view of the victims.
4. To compare the acceptability, replicability, translatability, effectiveness and efficacy in achieving their outcomes, including by seeking women's views of services provided.
5. To conduct field work at grass-roots level with women and develop programmes that aim to empower them to protect themselves from revictimization through sexual violence.

The project is divided into four workstreams, which will be developed between April 2010-April 2013:

Workstream 1: Mapping the current situation.
Objective: To map the current situation in the EU in terms of models of interventions for victims of sexual assault, and identify key stakeholders across the EU.

Workstream 2: Developing a research and evaluation tool, and utilising it to develop an evaluation of models of intervention
Objective: To develop a research and evaluation tool and resources to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions for victims of sexual assault, using a user focused approach.  To carry out a number of case studies and peer learning missions to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various intervention models from the perspective of the users, and the effectiveness and efficiency from the point of view of the policy makers, including a consideration of the transferability of the intervention model to different social and cultural settings.

Workstream 3: Dissemination of findings
Objective: To ensure the rapid and effective dissemination across the EU and more widely of the products and findings of the project.

Workstream 4: Developing training materials and trainers
Objective: To develop training materials which include best practice and the user perspective in order to improve services EU wide.