The Child Rights Center organized two two-day trainings “Multidisciplinary Approach to Individual Assessment of Children in Contact with the Law” for experts in the field of juvenile justice, in the period from 11-12 March and 18-19 March 2021.
The main goal of the trainings was to strengthen the capacity of experts in the field of juvenile justice, which should lead to improvements in the system of conducting individual assessments of children in contact with the law and developing multidisciplinary individual assessment practices. The trainings will be supported by the development of an online learning platform, which will further assist practitioners in the process of developing and conducting systematic multidisciplinary individual assessments of children.
When a child is part of a criminal procedure, whether as a perpetrator, victim or witness of a crime, relevant experts in the field of protection of the rights of the child should act together and analyze all aspects of the life of the child, by identifying its strengths and potential vulnerability. Multidisciplinary individual assessment helps to guarantee access to justice for every child. Although very important, many countries in Europe have very little experience in applying multidisciplinary individual assessment in a comprehensive child-centered way.
The training was attended by 64 experts from various institutions (representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, judges, prosecutors, social workers, psychologists, pedagogues, psychologists and forensic experts from the Institute of Mental Health), who reached useful conclusions through lectures, group work and discussion aimed at improving the access to justice for every child.
Here are some of the conclusions/recommendations from the training:
- It is necessary to establish even closer multisectoral cooperation of all experts working with children who are in contact with the law, as well as more efficient and appropriate data exchange.
- It is necessary to improve technical conditions so as hearing of children is conducted in accordance with legally established standards.
- It is necessary to establish cooperation with other persons related to children, such as school psychologists, pedagogues, relatives, etc.
- It is necessary to improve multisectoral cooperation in the period after the trial, i.e. the imposition of criminal sanctions, as well as in the period of resocialization of the child.
- It is necessary to provide more skilled workers in social welfare centres, considering that skilled workers are overburdened and do not have enough time to pay full attention to the case.
- There is an urgent need to work on amendments to the Law on Juvenile Criminal Offenders and Criminal Protection of Juveniles and Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia.
The trainings were conducted within the project “FOCUS on My Needs – Working together for Children in Criminal Proceedings”, implemented by the Child Rights Center in partnership with organizations from Hungary, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Belgium, Greece and Romania: Terre des hommes Hungary, Defense for Children Netherlands, SAPI Bulgaria, Child Circle Belgium, Terre des hommes Romania. The Prroject is co-funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme of the European Union.
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