The Support Centre for Sexually Abused Children is the only service in the Lithuania which provides specialized, complex services for sexually abused children and their family members.

The Centre is unique among the European Barnahus and similar setups, in that it has 10 places for children and their carers to stay overnight if needed. The average stay is about 3 days, sometimes longer.

Since launching in 2016, the Support Centre has successfully provided assistance for more than 520 children affected by sexual abuse and their relatives. Of this, 154 forensic interviews and 108 medical examinations were completed. More than 254 family members received crisis intervention counselling.

The Support Centre is also busy providing local and external training to more than 1000 professionals on how to identify sexual abuse and what to do in these situations. In 2018, the Ministry of Social Security and Labor approved a training program “Child sexual abuse: identification and response.” This programme has trained a further 100 professionals on theoretical and practical skills.

For more information, see this presentation.

Lithuania was a pilot country in the PROMISE 1 project.