A small study of mothers and young children living in domestic-violence shelters in the Netherlands reported improvements after a sequence of parenting support followed by trauma treatment: NIKA first, then EMDR. The findings suggest the approaches may address different needs, but the available report does not establish that either treatment caused the changes or that the results apply to all survivors.
What the study examined
Leiden University’s account describes doctoral research by Willemien van den Dorpel and colleagues involving 52 women and their children, aged up to six, in Dutch domestic-violence shelters. Participants were followed for 13 weeks. The care sequence began with NIKA parenting support and continued with EMDR for mothers’ trauma symptoms. The account is a news report, not a full methods paper, so it does not provide enough information to assess the study’s design in detail. Read the Leiden University report.
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What NIKA is and what changed
NIKA is short for Nederlandse Interventie Kortdurend op Atypisch opvoedgedrag, a Dutch short-term intervention focused on atypical parenting behavior. In the reported program, parents took part in five sessions: they were filmed playing with their child, then reviewed the footage with a therapist and received feedback.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →The report says the mothers’ average parenting sensitivity score rose from 4 to 5 on a 1–9 scale. It describes 4 as insufficiently sensitive and 5 as sensitive. Researchers also reported a reduction in disrupted parenting behavior. These are reported group-level changes; the account does not give the statistical analyses or comparison data needed to determine how robust they are.
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What EMDR changed—and what it did not appear to change
After NIKA, mothers received EMDR, a trauma treatment. According to the report, their average score on a PTSD questionnaire fell from around 50 to 24; 31 was given as the clinical cutoff. These are averages reported for this cohort, not a guarantee of an individual outcome or proof that EMDR alone produced the decline.
The researcher said trauma treatment did not appear to change parenting behavior. That distinction matters: reducing trauma symptoms and supporting parent-child interaction are different goals. The report’s sequence therefore points to a possible role for combining trauma treatment with parenting support when both needs are present. It does not compare NIKA and EMDR head to head or show that one is preferable for everyone. In some cases, the report notes, children may also need trauma treatment.
How far the findings can be applied
The results concern a particular group: mothers and very young children staying in Dutch shelters, observed over 13 weeks. The available account does not state whether there was a control or comparison group, how participants were recruited, how many left the study, or whether improvements lasted beyond follow-up. It also does not provide effect sizes or confidence intervals. Without those details, the findings should be treated as encouraging reported observations, not proof of causal effectiveness or a basis for predicting results in other settings.
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The report says 80% of the participating mothers had experienced some form of child abuse during their own childhood. This figure describes the study participants only; it is not an estimate for survivors generally.
Domestic violence prevalence is broader than intimate partner violence
For context, the Netherlands’ 2024 Prevalence Monitor, published by WODC and CBS, reports that 9% of residents aged 16 and older experienced one or more forms of domestic violence in the preceding 12 months. The monitor’s definition includes violence by family members as well as current or former partners, so this is not an intimate-partner-violence-only figure. It is based on self-reported survey data, and the monitor notes that some categories were operationalized differently across editions, limiting direct comparisons over time. See the WODC and CBS 2024 monitor.
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Van den Dorpel described practical barriers in the shelter context, including unstable or unsafe circumstances, complex legal and financial needs, overloaded schedules, insurer concerns, and possible refusal of consent by another parent who has parental responsibility. These are barriers reported by the researcher, not universal requirements for every survivor or service. A person considering care can ask a local domestic-violence service or qualified clinician what options are available and what consent rules apply in their circumstances.
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