Dialog mod Vold — Denmark's Nationwide Free Treatment Service for Domestic-Violence Perpetrators

Dialog mod Vold ("Dialogue Against Violence") is a free, government-funded ambulatory treatment service for people who use violence against an intimate partner, run by the Askov Foundation (Askov Fonden) since 2002 and expanded to national coverage in 2004. It now operates from offices in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg, Odense, Esbjerg and Slagelse, treating perpetrators with a combination of cognitive-behavioural and psychodynamic methods, alongside parallel support tracks for partners and children affected by the violence.
The programme has been formally evaluated more than once. Denmark's Social Authority (Socialstyrelsen) assessed it in 2011 and concluded that its interventions reduce both physical and psychological violence among clients "to a high degree." In 2017 VIVE — the Danish National Research and Analysis Centre for Welfare — reviewed its narrative-method treatment for children exposed to abuse and rated it the most promising practice of its kind in Denmark; the same year, researchers at the University of Southern Denmark published a clinical study of perpetrator characteristics drawn from Dialog mod Vold's own client data.
Public evaluation summaries stop short of publishing a single headline recidivism or violence-reduction percentage, and the organisation's own documentation notes that a 2020 outcome report ("Klienterne, volden og effekten af behandlingen") exists without its figures being detailed on the public site — a gap that limits how precisely the programme's impact can be quantified from outside sources.
The model has drawn recognition beyond Denmark: the European Crime Prevention Network (EUCPN) catalogues it as a preventive/treatment good practice, and the International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers reported in 2024 that the Askov Foundation secured a permanent government grant to keep the programme running — a marker of sustained institutional confidence after two decades of operation.

Read the full analysis: https://dialogmodvold.dk/dokumentation/