Every year, thousands of children stay at least one night at women’s shelters in Sweden with their guardian. At shelters the violence stops, but children’s rights are at stake. During 2021-2022 five organizations have been working together in the project AVEC – After the violence, to improve thesituation for children in shelters: Save the Children Sweden, Children´s Welfare Foundation Sweden, the Gothenburg Church City Mission Foundation, Marie Cederschiöld University (former Ersta Sköndal Bräcke University College) and Barnafrid -National Center on Violence Against Children at Linköping University. The project was based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the EU Charter, Directive 2019/29/EU and the Istanbul Convention. The overall objective of the AVEC project was the following: With a child rights approach, increase and improve protection and support for children at women’s shelters who are victims of domestic violence; increase the children’s mental well-being during and after their stay at the shelter.

This report outlines one part of the results from the AVEC project: the IDEAL model for child centred cooperation. The IDEAL model concerns different stages of the placement process, when children are coming into the shelter (I), during placement (D), when planning for and exiting the shelter (E), at the transition to life after the shelter stay (A), and it includes activities securing a more long-term situation that aids children’s recovery (L). The model is focused upon cooperation between women’s shelters and statutory services, that is, agencies making decisions on placements of adults or children at a women’s shelter and agencies responsible for child welfare investigations, as well as agencies offering support to victims of violence.