Participation in legal proceedings places children at high risk of victimisation. Research from SAPI (Social Activities and Practices Institute – Bulgaria) showed that children are repeatedly interviewed about the same subject by police officers, social workers, investigators, experts, judges, etc., most of which have little child-oriented knowledge, and are not capable of correctly interrogating children. Medical examinations are still conducted without consideration for the child’s specific needs, which carries a high risk for secondary victimisation, especially in sexual abuse cases. Overall, research shows that child victims or witnesses of crime’s rights to information, accompaniment and support are not at all guaranteed.
The project aims to improve the situation of child victims or witnesses of crime in legal proceedings through an integrated approach. In support of programme priority “Supporting victims of crime”, the project promotes the use of the 2012 Directive on minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, “in order to improve mutual trust with the view to ensuring protection of rights of victims and of the accused”.
The project's final outcome is the production of a detailed model for multidisciplinary needs assessment and, on this basis, the development of an integrated approach for guaranteeing the child’s rights and best interests during their involvement in legal proceedings.
The target groups are:
1) Professionals involved in criminal procedures (police, prosecutors, judges) in Bulgaria, France, Italy and Romania, who will take part in educational activities to improve their attitudes and their capacity for guaranteeing the child’s rights in a multidisciplinary manner.
2) Professionals from the system of child protection; social service providers; forensic medicine specialists providing expertise and psycho-therapeutic support to child victims of crime in Bulgaria and France; and state policy makers, who will be introduced to an integrated approach to assessing and responding to the needs of children involved in criminal proceedings.
The project is scheduled to last 24 months. It started in May 2014 and will end in May 2016.
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The project aims to advance the development of multidisciplinary and integrated practices and to focus these practices on the child in all partner countries, as well as at the EU level. This will be done through modifying the services and catering them to the child’s best interest and stage of development. The project is expected to contribute to the overall elimination of the ‘competency to testify’ assessment, still in effect in Bulgaria and Romania, and as a result, raising the validity of testimonials of children. The educational tools and recommendations produced throughout the project will facilitate a quicker and more effective incorporation of Directive 29/2012/EU in national legislations.
The main outcome will be training in a common approach, a clear methodology and model for unifying the various psycho-social, medical, and legal research to create a holistic assessment of the child.
Expected outputs:
The specific objective of the project is to create a detailed model for a multidisciplinary needs assessment and, based on this, an integrated approach for guaranteeing children’s rights and the best interest of the child during his/her involvement in legal proceedings. This will be achieved through:
Creating specialised child-friendly interviewing procedures.
Training a national specialised interviewing team.
Creating a sustainable programme for continuing education for magistrates at the National Justice Institute.
Introducing to the curriculum a training programme for police officers.
Proposing standards for hearing testimonies of child victims or witnesses of crime involved in legal procedures.
One of the goals is to demonstrate, through the outcomes, opportunities for basing different interventions (judicial, protection and rehabilitation) on holistic assessment and the child’s best interests.
Another important goal is to prevent secondary victimisation through a multidisciplinary approach. To achieve this goal, a group of experts will produce specific work instruments, such as an educational toolkit (guidebook and training movie). All the materials will be made available in five languages.
One of the results will be to train fifty trainers who will in turn each train a total of 400 professionals.
The project will advance the improvement of multidisciplinary and integrated practices, as well as conceptualising the practices involving children in all partner countries, as well as around the European Union.
An important goal is to contribute to the overall elimination of the “competency to testify” assessment that is present in Bulgaria and Romania.
The project is co-funded by the Justice programme of the European Union.
It is coordinated by:
The Social Activities and Practices Institute – SAPI – in Bulgaria.
Partners of the project are:
- Federaţia Organizaţiilor Neguvernamentale "Pentru Copil" – FONPC – (Romania)
- Il Fiore del Deserto (Italy)
- La Voix de l’Enfant (France)
- International Juvenile Justice Observatory (Belgium)
IJJO role:
The IJJO is responsible for conducting the external evaluation of the project’s activities and results. For this purpose, a representative of the organization attends all partners' meetings, and has the task of preparing an interim and a final evaluation report.
The IJJO is also responsible for producing two research papers on best practices for child participation in criminal proceedings in two EU countries.
Finally, the IJJO is responsible for disseminating the outputs and results of the project through its extended network.