The aim of the RESPONSE project is to increase maternal health team GBV disclosure in patients, referral to specialist services and safety planning in 5 geographically diverse EU countries (Austria, France, Germany, Romania, and Spain).

This project will build on the Daphne supported IMPLEMENT (www.implement-gbv.eu) project (2014-2016) in which 4 of the RESPONSE partners participated in (AT, FR, RO, UK-trainers) by using the IMPLEMENT Training Manual developed to target GBV identification in emergency departments and adapt it to train maternal health teams who will have numerous contacts with survivors through the maternal health visits.

The beneficiaries are:

• women who seek routine prenatal care during pregnancy and perinatal support up to one year after pregnancy and are victims of GBV;
• trainers who will provide capacity-building seminars within their respective maternity health settings;
• health care professionals and social workers within the health setting who are not equipped to assist victims of GBV with their specialized needs;
• health professional students who don’t receive any education on the identification of GBV; and health sector policymakers at the national level who are responsible for allocating the
• resources and institutional measures for specialised support for victims during pregnancy in the health care setting.

Our team is composed of one lead institution, one maternal health clinic and one public authority as partners to establish multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary cooperation to reduce underreporting of GBV in maternal health settings in the EU.

The main objective of the RESPONSE project is to provide capacity building in 5 European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Romania, and Spain) in order to increase referral/reporting to specialised services for survivors of gender-based violence in maternal health settings using a rights-based approach, which is gender and survivor focused.