In Great Britain, for instance, national shelters work with feminist ideology and the Chiswick shelter more resembles the family-dynamic model. The four Finnish shelters started in the spring of 1979 as a three-year experiment of the First Homes' Federation of Finland, a semi-public social care organization. The Finnish shelters are family-oriented and offer a non-violent high standard refuge for all victims of family violence, females or males. They also work in close cooperation with social care organizations. This is a pilot study of the first year of the operation of the Finnish shelters. The data is based on 533 client visits. 97% of the visits were made by women and 3% by men. The clients had 561 children with them in the shelters. Physical violence had prompted about half of the visits. Various forms of verbal violence and threatening behavior were, however, also common. The lower social categories account for a disproportionate share of the clientele. Alcohol and psychiatric problems and jealousy were also common. Up to now, the experiment shows that the ideology chosen has been thoroughly accepted by the staff as well as by the clients. The actual organization of the system will be later reviewed but already now there is much interest to start similar shelters as a part of the communal social care system in many cities. (Author abstract)