Flanders expands project for young victims of domestic violence
Flemish minister of education and justice Zuhal Demir is expanding the Handle with Care pilot project on domestic violence involving children. After the Mechelen region, the rest of the province of Antwerp will now be covered. The other Flemish provinces will follow in due course, Demir announced on Friday at the De Spreeuwen primary school in Mechelen.
Handle with Care was launched in 2023 on the initiative of minister Demir, following Dutch and British examples. The project focuses on the schools of children who have had the police visit their homes due to domestic violence. The school receives a message saying: this child needs extra care today.
In Mechelen, Willebroek, Klein-Brabant and Heist-op-den-Berg, 84 schools have now received training on how to deal with pupils who have experienced traumatic events in a trauma-sensitive manner. The figures show that, unfortunately, the target group of children is considerable: in the Rivierenland police zone alone, there were 1,215 interventions in cases of domestic violence involving children last school year.
“A child who experiences violence at home cannot simply pretend that nothing happened the next day,” declared minister Demir. “Their mind is not on multiplication tables then, but on what happened the day before. Handle with Care ensures that the school is aware of this and that there is someone keeping an eye on things.”
The roll-out in the province of Antwerp will take place in collaboration with the local police zones and as soon as a new platform for data exchange in the police zone in question is operational. This will enable the police to quickly and securely forward the Handle with Care signal to the right school.
#FlandersNewsService | Illustration © PHOTO Allard de Witte / HOLLANDSEHOOGTE
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