The Regional Secretary for Labour and Social Solidarity, Ana Paula Marques, highlighted on Tuesday the strong investment carried out by the Government in preventing and tackling domestic violence by providing new social responses to support victims.

The Secretary met with the partner organisations of the Local Centre to Prevent and Combat Domestic Violence of São Jorge at the Velas Basic Education and Secondary School, stressing the advantages of local centres in the prevention and fight against domestic violence in the Region, which already cover six of the nine Azores islands.
 
According to Ana Paula Marques, this is an “innovative" answer that aims to collect information to produce diagnostics for characterising local domestic violence situations, identifying and describing the main problems and promoting adequate solutions to the problems identified. 

Local centres, which encompass local public and private entities, are also indented to ensure an immediate support response to victims, based on the co-responsibility of all entities involved in the project, in the different dimensions of domestic violence.

Moreover, the Regional Government has also been investing in the training of technicians working in the area of domestic violence.

In this context, the Government has created the Shelter Houses to support domestic violence victims and it is developing a pilot project – Intervention Commission for the Prevention and Protection of the Elderly under the Integrated Support Network to sheltered Elderly in emergency situations, which aims to enable the legal procedures to prevent and protected the elderly at risk of violence by establishing a close coordination in the identification, immediate reporting and provision of support and shelter.

One should recall that the new Teleassistance Service to Support Domestic Violence Victims has already been implemented in the District of Ponta Delgada.