elated to the case of a six-year-old boy who tested positive for drugs during a toxicology screen, the Human Rights Ombudsman has already taken steps and called upon the competent Piran centre for social work to clarify the situation. The Ombudsman expects immediate clarifications from the competent authorities regarding the planned measures for the protection of the child.
The Ombudsman adds that it is the duty and task of parents to protect a child from being exposed to all potential dangers, among which illegal drugs undoubtedly belong. If parents fail in this role, it is essential that competent institutions immediately protect the child from parents’ actions.
Sadly, the Human Rights Ombudsman finds that in practice, competent institutions in individual cases still do not do enough to protect the rights of children and, all too often, decide on their benefits on insufficient bases. The Ombudsman also finds that certain centres for social work (CSW) frequently procrastinate in the performance of the duties assigned to them according to the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, despite having been made aware by parents, schools, kindergartens, media or even children themselves that, for example, one of the parents is violent towards a child or endangers the child in any way. The institution of the Ombudsman furthermore warns that every centre for social work must, in cases where the victim is a child, do everything necessary to protect the child as soon as it is notified about the individual case. The Ombudsman has been warning for several years now that the operation of centres for social work is too often excessively bureaucratic, all too frequently insensitive, and remote from helpless individuals. It is also unacceptable that centres for social work, to which people turn in dire straits, often do not do their job as they should.
“A centre for social work must always react immediately when they receive information about child endangerment and must immediately carry out checks directly in the environment where the child is living. If a CSW does not investigate what is actually happening in an individual case, this undoubtedly violates the rights of the child, which is completely unacceptable. Based on its findings, a CSW is also bound to pass forward to the court all necessary measures for the protection of a child,” stressed the Deputy Ombudsman Dr Jože Ruparčič, who is responsible at the institution for children’s rights. Hence, the Ombudsman institution expects a quick response and actions from the competent CSW Piran.
