The project focusses on elderly female victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). 7 partners from 6 countries (Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom) with different welfare regimes and gender equality traditions will carry out research on IPV against elderly women and develop recommendations for policy makers and service providers for elderly female victims of domestic violence. As a first step, every country will perform a secondary data analysis and thereby compile nationally available data from women's shelters, hotlines, victim's services, domestic violence intervention systems and police statistics. A standardized postal survey of victim’s service institutions (women’s shelters/refuges, hotlines, counselling systems, services for crime victims and victims of elder abuse, adult protection systems) will be used to collect data on institutional knowledge of the phenomenon and handling of cases but also as a screening instrument to detect organisations with case knowledge. On this basis, in every country 30 professionals with case knowledge will be interviewed. The survey and the interviews will be used as a starting point to get into contact with 10 victims of IPV as interview partners in every country. In the semi-structured interviews with staff and victims, characteristics of victims and perpetrators, risk and protective factors, causes of abuse and dynamics and context of violent acts will be explored in detail. A special focus will be put on help seeking behaviour, barriers for help seeking and gaps in existing support systems. In each country, partners will build or use existing national expert networks consisting of representatives of national organisations on violence against women, seniors’ organisations, elder abuse organisations, law enforcement agencies, legislation, and policy makers. These experts will facilitate the access to data for secondary data analysis (see above) and will identify current responses to IPV against elderly women and detect gaps in legislation and support systems and discuss the national need for future action on the topic. At an international workshop, experts from EU-countries who do not participate in the project will add expertise as regards current and future action on this issue in their countries and will contribute to developing recommendations for prospective national and EU-activities. The partners in this project are nationally and internationally renowned scientists and very experienced in research on domestic violence, elder abuse and/or gerontology. All are interested in bringing together expertise from gerontological, criminological and domestic violence background and making it useable for the development of practice. All partners are closely linked to national and international networks of researchers and practitioners and take part in the development of policies. Associate partner is Prof. Zvi Eisikovits from University of Haifa, who will enrich the research process and the discussion on future activities with his expertise on qualitative research on domestic violence against elderly women and on effective intervention systems.