About us
There are over 380 family and partner counselling centres run by a wide range of sponsoring organisations in Austria. They are funded from the Federal Chancellery budget, Division for Family and Youth.
In addition to providing counselling in crisis situations in the sense of helping people to help themselves, these centres also offer information and preventative educational work.
The following were the most common topics in 2021:
- separation, divorce, visitation rights, child support (16.25 percent)
- psychological problems and addictions (20.67 percent)
- relationship conflicts, communication, division of roles, sexuality (12.43 percent)
- parenting, childcare, school, separation from children (12.12 percent)
- violence in the family, abuse, poor treatment (11.86 percent)
- pregnancy, birth control, desire to have a child (4.3 percent)
Funded family counselling centres are available in all areas across Austria. There is currently an average of one family counselling centre for every 22,500 inhabitants.
In 2021, around 316,000 counselling hours were offered and about 445,000 counselling sessions held. There is a particular focus on pregnancy counselling, counselling on violence in the family, divorce and separation and counselling for parents with disabled children.
Since 1998, there have also been family counselling centres that can provide assistance for partners, children, young people and other reference persons (grandparents, friends etc.) if a relative, parent or partner has “contact” with a “sect”.
