Child – friendly justice

The project is financed by OAK foundation and is implemented in cooperation with ‘Children’s legal centre – Bulgaria’ foundation.

Project timeline: September 2012 – August 2015

The project aims to ensure effective protection of children’s rights before, during and after judicial proceedings in civil matters through introduction of minimum standards that guarantee child-friendly justice. Such guarantees will be achieved mainly through the development oftraining programmes for magistrates and social workers, provision of general and specialised inter-disciplinary training of magistrates and other professionals, adaptation of court rooms,setting up of family units/panel of judges within the Courts, tailoring of integrated services that support and help children before, during and after the proceedings as well as drafting and dissemination of information materials for children who take part in judicial proceedings under the Family Code, the Child Protection Act, the Protection against Domestic Violence Act.

The minimum standards that guarantee child-friendly justice will be piloted in three Regional model-courts (Regional Court Burgas, Regional Court Veliko Tarnovo and Regional Court Zlatograd). However, the trainings will include also judges and social workers from the following areas – Razgrad, Kozloduy, Petrich, Blagoevgrad, Dulovo, Byala Slatina, Berkovitza, Haskovo, Razlog, Smolyan, Karlovo and Plovdiv.