The latest BHC research points out that there is no swift judicial resolution to longer-term situation of children who have been placed in crisis centers. Under Bulgarian law, the hearing and the decision of the court come within a month, which, compared to other countries, is a very long time frame. Yet the analyzed data shows that the institutions do not meet even this deadline.

Decisions take months

The survey found problems occurred in 79 accommodation cases (27 percent of all the cases). In reality, the actual judicial decision is announced two or even three months after the child has been placed in an emergency housing center, and still there are several cases without judicial decisions.

The maximum time a child can be housed in a crisis center is six months, which is too long and perverts the role of a service designed for specialized paternalism. For this reason, centers that must guarantee specialized support for children at risk are being transformed into conventional shelters.

The optimal time for making an impact and overcoming the emergency situation placed on the child is not more than six weeks, experts say. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of accommodated children in the emergency centers was 289, and only in 29 cases (one of 10) the child stayed in the facility for just a month.

Education is key

According to the heads of the crisis centers BHC visited, too much emphasis is put on the residing nature of the facilities rather than on the specialized paternalism and individual support (psychological, legal, social) that must be provided to a child in a critical situation, especially when it comes to an emergency accommodation.

Education is the key issue for the legal stay of children in such centers. For the period 2015-2016, 17 percent of all the residents in the 15 existing crisis centers in the country had no access to education. This means that every sixth child is temporarily or permanently deprived of education due to conventional reasons or negative attitude towards problematic children, lack of interest from the institutions, bureaucratic obstacles such as failure to provide the necessary documents, lack of regulations and some others.

The majority of the children have very poor literacy, which does not correspond to their completed educational level - many of them can hardly read and are unable to write, and do not possess fundamental knowledge and skills. The children who have dropped out of the education system before their accommodation in an emergency center are at a higher risk of being deprived of education after entering the emergency center.

Government to-do list

The Ministry of Education must clearly commit itself to overcoming this problem. To do this the government should: ensure individual and proper methods for educating the children who have permanently dropped out of the education system; regularly monitor the education provided in the emergency centers; drastically shorten the time it takes abused children to enroll in a new school; and last but not least, abolish for the children in a critical situation the regulatory restriction that prevents them from moving to a new school 30 days before the end of the school year.