On 16-17 July 2026, the Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN) and some of its member organisations, including most shelters, joined the Department of Social and Family Services Policy within the Ministry of Labor, Family and War Values at Brezovica Hotel to discuss strategies for improving the quality of services for victims of domestic violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his opening remarks, Blerim Shabani, Director of the Department of Social and Family Services Policy, said that the purpose of the session was to reflect together on challenges and identify practical solutions. He spoke about institutional responsibilities, licensing, service standards, sheltering children via referrals and improving coordination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adile Shaqiri, Head of the Social Services Division, presented the service standards that shelters must meet. She emphasised that standards are not only legal requirements, but also the means to guarantee that services are safe, professional and victim centred. Shaqiri emphasised that all staff, not only managers, should be familiar with documents, regulations and internal procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
KWN and participants expressed readiness to support each other, as needed, in drafting or improving policies, manuals and necessary documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nicole Farnsworth from KWN emphasised the importance of its and its members\u2019 collaboration with the Ministry, a key partner in protecting victims. She underlined that state funding should be based on real costs of assisting victims and quality services in line with the Istanbul Convention. She said that the budget should be drafted every year in cooperation with the Ministry, considering the number of cases and actual costs for quality services, in line with Kosovo\u2019s gender-responsive budgeting requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To facilitate this, Era Kadriu and Farnsworth presented budget forecasts for 2027-2029, developed together with shelters, which aim to inform the Ministry\u2019s budget planning and future budgeting methodology, currently under discussion. The proposal was discussed with shelters and Ministry representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Participants also discussed concrete cases from their work, including complex situations for which no clear procedures exist. Special attention was paid to child beneficiaries and strategies for managing difficult cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The discussion evidenced the need for standardising data collection, processing and storage. The Ministry said they are developing an integrated system that will support planning, better address victims\u2019 needs and enable budgeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lack of specialised shelter services for LGBTIQ+ people was also raised as an issue that requires institutional attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, participants shared a word that described the feeling with which they were leaving the workshop. Taken together, their words formed a message similar to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLove and patience for all our beneficiaries, and for each of us, improves the quality of services, because together we are stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This message summarised the spirit of the workshop: solidarity, mutual support and joint commitment can contribute to improving the quality services provided to victims of domestic violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These fruitful discussions are part of the project \u201cInstitutionalizing Quality Rehabilitation and Reintegration Services for Violence Survivors II\u201d supported by International Partnerships Austria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On 16-17 July 2026, the Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN) and some of its member organisations, including most shelters, joined the Department of Social and Family Services Policy within the Ministry of Labor, Family and War Values at Brezovica Hotel to discuss strategies for improving the quality of services for victims of domestic violence. In his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3369101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3369100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3369100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3369104,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369100\/revisions\/3369104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3369101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3369100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3369100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3369100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}