It’s an ordinary house, located in a residential area of Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital. It has neither the appearance of a police station nor that of a hospital. Inside, colorful walls and toys. By entering this very first Barnahus, literally “children’s house” in Icelandic, opened in 1998 on the Nordic island, the children should have had the feeling of going to a familiar place rather than an official building. Everything had to be done to appease them, as they came here to confide in the attacks they had suffered.
Under this comforting roof, teams specialized in the management of violence against minors: police officers, magistrates, doctors, psychologists and child protection services. Everyone cooperates to hear the child’s words, record their complaint and then offer them the best possible support during the legal process. A global, multidisciplinary approach carried out in a single structure.
The idea was born in Iceland in the mid-1990s. While the country is facing several cases of violence against minors, the gaps in its child protection system are coming to light: a fragmented network between 180 local services to handle this type of case; a worrying lack of collaboration between investigation services, medico-legal care units, justice, etc. This leads to subjecting child victims to too many repeated interrogations, which reactivate their trauma each time.
“We had more than 100 cases a year handled in different sectors – child protection, police, medical profession – but the system was completely incapable of handling these cases,” Bragi Guðbrandsson, a senior Icelandic civil servant and child rights expert, recently recalled in an English-language podcast on justice. While at the head of the Icelandic government child protection agency, he set up the very first Barnahus in Reykjavik, to care for child victims of violence. Bringing together all relevant services under one roof, it offers an innovative solution for conducting criminal investigations and child protection investigations closely and in parallel.
A model that appeals to Europe
The device quickly attracted the attention of professionals from other European countries. In 2015, the Barnahus model was recognized as a promising practice by the Council of Europe, which encouraged other member states to adapt it. “In our strategy for children’s rights, we have made it clear that we will continue to prioritize this model,” declared Marija Pejčinović Burić, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, in November 2022. “When something goes wrong – for reasons that are so often beyond children’s control – it is not the support of a disembodied and fragmented state that children need, but caring, coordinated and personal care that does not frighten, intimidate or isolate them,” it said.
Since then, in addition to the Barnahus in Reykjavik, 32 children’s homes of the same type have opened in Sweden, 11 in Norway and five in Denmark. In addition to the Nordic countries, Spain has adopted this Barnahus model, with 14 houses opened in the Catalonia region. In the local press, the Catalan authorities indicated in 2024 that after this deployment, the number of detected cases of sexual violence against minors doubled compared to the previous year. This is one of the rare examples where quantitative indicators have been publicly highlighted.
Other countries are working on similar projects, but which are not standardized under the Barnahus name. This is the case of Germany with its “Kinderschutzhaus”, of Italy with local projects not networked. The European “Promise” initiative set up between 2015–2023 and extended since aims to create European standards for all types of Barnahus projects, in order to harmonize practices.
In France, several systems inspired by the model already exist (pediatric reception units, single speech collection systems, hospital or judicial structures dedicated to child victims), but they remain heterogeneous and not integrated into this international Barnahus network.
In 2024, European academics who analyzed this Icelandic model concluded in their study that in the countries where they were established, Barnahus alone did not constitute “miracle” and “turnkey” solutions. But they have contributed to a real transformation of the justice, health and child protection systems, more centered around the needs of the child.
