Multi-Agency Responses
to Violence against
Older Women

What is the MARVOW Project?

Abuse of older women is perhaps the most underdeveloped of all aspects of support services for gender-based violence in Europe. For this reason, the MARVOW project will develop and implement a comprehensive multiagency cooperation model for working with elderly victims of abuse. It will do so by bringing together a wide range of stakeholders from relevant sectors of activity (eldercare, healthcare, protection and social services, judiciary and police among others) to identify the gaps that exist within current systems that hinder their ability to adequately serve older victims. MARVOW will also assist these actors in implementing direct interventions to support victims and work with perpetrators to try and break the cycle of violence. The model will be extensively evaluated and improved before being disseminated to a wide audience of policy makers and service providers in partner countries (Austria, Estonia, Greece, Germany) and throughout Europe for replication.

Objectives of the project

• Improve knowledge of stakeholders in the prevention and response to DV on how to identify and respond to elderly women abuse
• Develop multi-agency cooperation model that creates a systematic response to the needs for protection and support of elderly women at high-risk of abuse and work with their perpetrators
• Implement case conferencing for older victims of violence to test multi-agency model
• Increase capacity of stakeholders to address elderly women abuse in a coordinated manner, guaranteeing their rights and needs are met
• Disseminate model to other communities for replication

Beneficiaries

Direct project beneficiaries

Police, victim support services, men counselling centres, anti-violence programs, senior centres, health care services, eldercare services, DV workers, policy makers

Indirect project beneficiaries

Elderly women victims of abuse
Perpetrators