Throughout the past few months, White Circle Croatia continuously provided social services to their users. Users received free legal and psychosocial assistance, financial assistance in the form of vouchers for basic necessities, as well as retraining for deficit professions. There is a noticeable growth of as much as 30% of users seeking psychosocial support compared to last year.
White Circle Croatia also highlights the Final Conference held in Zagreb entitled ‘Victims’ Rights: Where are we today?’ as the final part of the project ‘Survive, Overcome and Support Victims of Crime’ – ‘S.O.S. for victims’, an extremely important event. It marks the culmination of a two-year project funded by the European Commission.
In general, it can be concluded that great progress has been made in realizing the procedural rights of victims in partner countries, but there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of better provision of information, support and protection to all victims of criminal offences.
Support to the victim should be available from the moment the competent authorities learned about the victim and during the entire criminal procedure, as well as after the procedure for a certain period, in accordance with his individual needs. The victims, mostly women, express, however, the need for greater availability of specific services such as psychological and mental support services, psychotherapy, adequate accommodation, free legal aid, advice on financial and practical issues arising from criminal proceedings, etc. On the other hand, professionals express a lack of knowledge about the importance of support services and, as a result, are often inactive when referring to support services, so continuous education of professionals is proposed in this regard.
Even with all the aforementioned problems in practice, it can be concluded that the Republic of Croatia is well on its way to meeting all the conditions prescribed by this Directive with the condition of further monitoring of the implementation of the law, integrated action of all institutions and organizations responsible for the support and protection of victims, and continuous education and sensitization of all people who, through their work, come into contact with victims of criminal acts, it was said, among others, from the meeting.
