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Skriv utSKR has a strong child perspective, which means we see children living in the women’s shelters with their mothers as individuals in their own right, with their own needs, wishes and experiences of violence.
Most of SKR’s women’s shelters provide accommodation for mothers with children. Some of the shelters also have special activities for children, such as group therapy sessions.
Both SKR and the majority of the women’s shelters are striving to develop more organised activities for the children living there. Many children assume they are responsible for what is happening, and not being able to stop the violence and abuse can make them ill. Their experiences can leave them traumatised and in need of psychiatric care.
We also know that children who experience violence towards someone close to them are themselves more likely to become victims of physical violence and abuse.
Saying that children “witness” violence suggests that children are passive observers to the abuse of their mothers. This is often not the case. Children develop strategies for coping with the violence, and remaining passive is a strategy in itself. SKR prefers to describe these children as “children who experience violence”. We take the psychological violence that children experience very seriously, and in a family where violence takes place we see children as active subjects.
SKR believes it is important to affirm that anyone under the age of 18 is regarded as a child. All children of abused women are welcome to our shelters, both girls and boys.
SKR is a member of the Child Rights Information Network (Nätverket för Barnkonventionen) and is working to influence public opinion to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Swedish law.
The Swedish Social Services Act (chapter 5 § 11) states that a child who witnesses violence or other forms of attack on or by a close relative is a victim of violence. It also says that the state has a particular liability to compensate a child who has witnessed a serious crime on a close relative, even in cases where the child is not entitled to receive compensation from the perpetrator. In such cases the child receives what is known as crime victim compensation.
SKR believes that seeing children as victims of crime is not enough; they have themselves been subjected to a crime and should therefore have the right to bring a case against the perpetrator. SKR believes that exposing a child to violence against the mother is in itself a crime, over and above the actual crime of subjecting the mother to violence and threatening behaviour.
In 2009 SKR joined forces with two other organisations in Sweden, the Swedish Association for Victim Support (BOJ) and the Association for Victims of Sexual Abuse (HOPP) to work for the rights of vulnerable children.
Together we submitted five demands to the Minister for Social Services, Göran Hägglund. These were revised in 2010 to the demands to:
- establish a Children’s Code based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on the Exercise of Children’s Rights
- make acts of abuse in front of children a punishable crime
- establish a National Children’s Centre
- establish Houses for Children (Barnahus) throughout the country
- reinforce the judicial system with child experts
