Emergency shelter

Ada Women’s Shelter and Young Women’s Empowerment Centre also runs an emergency shelter for women, teen girls and children who need to flee their home to escape violence and threats. Our emergency shelter has 8 separate bedrooms for women with children.

You can come to our emergency shelter by:

• Contacting Social Services in the municipality/district where you live. Social Services can grant you assistance for staying at an emergency shelter after talking to you about your situation. Read more about Social Service’s obligations in relation to intimate partner violence here. On nights and weekends, you should instead contact the Social Services emergency number in the municipality where you live, since the Social Services Office will normally be closed at such times.
• Calling us directly. You will then pay for your housing yourself at a low cost. If you have a limited amount of money temporarily, we will try to resolve this in some way.

The housing we offer is collective self-catering, which means that you buy and cook your own food, clean, wash clothes, and handle everything like a normal home. Each family has its own bedroom and then shares the rest of the space with the other women and children in the shelter. The accommodation has a shared kitchen, TV room, toilet, shower, laundry room, and playroom for the children. The accommodation has surveillance cameras and panic alarms that send alerts to the Securitas security company and the police when triggered.

To be able to stay at the Ada Women’s Shelter and Young Women’s Empowerment Centre’s emergency shelter, you must be able to live with and show respect to others. You must also be completely alcohol and drug free while staying with us.

Ada is not able to take in animals. However, we work in partnership with VOOV, which can find a safe temporary home for your pet while you are staying at the emergency shelter. Are you worried that your animal will be harmed? Read more here.

All women and children staying at the shelter are assigned one or two contact persons who can provide help with practical matters and accompany the woman on visits to the police and other authorities. You will also meet with your contact person regularly for counselling and follow-up. For children, we offer counselling that follows the “Trappan model” or other age-appropriate tools that give the child a sense of safety and security that enables them to talk about what they have been through. We also do activities with the children. Mothers and children are also offered counselling with a psychologist from Psykologenheten Hisingen.

We are trained in the SARA (spousal assault risk assessment) and the PATRIARK (honour-based violence risk assessment) tools, and we perform a threat and risk assessment after the woman has moved in. The staff of the Ada Women’s Shelter and Young Women’s Empowerment Centre has extensive experience in working with women, teen girls and children who have experienced threats and violence. In addition to holding degrees in various relevant university programmes, we also have basic training in women’s shelter operations and the empowerment of women and teen girls. Added to this, we have further training in various areas related to our work.

Everyone working at the Ada Women’s Shelter and Young Women’s Empowerment Centre has taken a vow of secrecy and confidentiality. If you have been granted assistance by Social Services, we are also obliged to comply with the Social Services Act. This means that we are obliged to maintain documentation, maintain confidentiality, and report any observed abuse or neglect in accordance with Chapter 14 § 3 of the Social Services Act. If you are staying at Ada’s emergency shelter without assistance from Social Services, we are not obliged to maintain documentation. However, we are always legally required to make a report if we suspect a child has been abused.