Since the beginning of 2021, Victim Support Europe (BE), Dog4Life (IT), Viaduq67 (FR), Handi’Chiens (FR), Canisha (BE), Hachiko (BE) and the University College Cork (IE), have led a unique project funded by the European Justice Programme, which aims to train and place justice assistance dogs to work with vulnerable victims of crime on their journey to justice: Facility Dogs in Europe (FYDO).  

The FYDO project has a special significance in the context of the current revision of the EU’s Victims’ Rights Directive. By promoting the innovative use of facility dogs, the FYDO project encourages the use of justice assistance dogs across all EU Member States, so that every victim feels supported and empowered to participate in the justice process, to take up their legal rights, recover from victimisation and to regain their ; 

To date, six dogs have been placed to support victims in various settings (two in Belgium, three in Italy and one in France) and 15 handlers have been trained to work with them. Dogs and their humans work with victims of crime across the criminal justice and support settings. The project has developed a unique European facility dog training programme that ensures highly trained dogs can support vulnerable victims in their participation to criminal proceedings, as well as facilitate their recovery from the trauma of ; 

The project is just a first step towards partners’ long-term vision to ensure that all victims that need canine support can benefit from it. We also want to ensure FYDO dogs have the right to access any location where their support is needed, including courts, prosecutors’ offices or other ; 

After almost two years of implementation, at the final conference, partners will showcase FYDO’s objectives and achievements – we will reflect on successes and challenges with the participation of VSE, partners – and our FYDO dogs and their ; 

If you would like to hear about the successes of the previous two years, hear testimonials from victims, members of the judiciary, our partners and supporters, please save the date – 18 October 2022, and plan to join ; 

We look forward to seeing you in Brussels this October!