Every victim has a right to receive professional help, support and assistance. This professional support is provided by victim support organisations accredited under the Act on Victims and other organisations providing support in a different extent (i.e. registered organisations provide help in the area of social services and not in the extent described below).
Accredited victim support organisation are obliged to fulfil conditions relating to professionalism, i.e. their employees have obtained a master´s university degree and have at least 3 years of practice. Usually, they specialise in certain category of particularly vulnerable victims in order to ensure high-level quality of specialised support.
Accredited victims support organisation provide either general support to victims or specialised support to particularly vulnerable victims.
General support to victims includes:
- providing and explaining information on criminal proceedings, its course, rights of victims in criminal proceedings, on available support,
- legal aid for exercising rights of victims,
- legal aid for exercising rights of victims in the position of an injured party or witness in a criminal proceedings (e.g. legal representation),
- psychological help,
- counselling on further victimisation, its risks and prevention of repeated victimisation.
Accredited victim support organisation providing general help is obliged to provide the first consultation free of charge. If the organisation received funding from the grant scheme of the Ministry of Justice, it is obliged to provide help free of charge for at least 90 days and upon request for a longer period of time.
Specialised support to particularly vulnerable victims includes:
- providing general support in the extent specified above,
- providing crisis psychological intervention,
- risks assessment relating to risk to life or health,
- securing of providing of social services in an emergency housing (safe house) or specialised social counselling, if life or health of a particularly vulnerable victim are threatened.
Particularly vulnerable victims are entitled to received specialised support free of charge. This support is provided for 90 days and upon victims request (request can be informal, e.g. setting up of a next meeting with one of the employees) for a longer period of time.
Accredited victim support organisations can also operate as an intervention centre for victims of domestic violence. Intervention centres provide all help and support mentioned above. In addition, they proactively contact victims after receiving information from the police on expulsion of a violent person from a shared household. Within 72 hours, a regionally relevant intervention centre tries to contact the victim and provide help and support. It is your rights as a victim to decide whether to accept help and support from an intervention centre and you can contact any intervention centre later on if you decline the offer of help on the first contact.
Victims of domestic violence can reach out to any intervention centre and contact them anytime, there is no need to wait for the police or for expulsion of a perpetrator from the shared household.
Intervention centres provide help to all victims of domestic violence in their relevant region.
In case you are not sure which intervention centre or victim support organisation to contact, please contact any of them. Accredited victim support organisations cooperate in order to ensure that all victims receive help and support they need.
