The Czech Republic Annual Report 2010 Drug ... - Drogy-info.cz

(diagnostic institutions), and rehabilitation institutions. In relation to the National Action Plan to Transform and Unify
the System of Care for Vulnerable Children for the Period 2009–2011 (the National Action Plan), the Ministry of
Education developed the Framework Policy for the Transformation of the System of Alternative Care in Educational
Establishments, which incorporates the objective of reducing the number of children placed in any type of institutional
care on a long-term basis, preconditioned by the strengthening of the preventive element of work with vulnerable
children and their families and support for the development and availability of the relevant services, including the
building of a network of specialised outpatient services featuring professional care centred on children’s needs and
work with the family system in its entirety.
The National Action Plan conforms to the ongoing process of converting nursery homes and homes for children up
to the age of three into children’s centres. The purpose of this transformation is to ensure general access to
comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and coordinated care primarily focused on the provision of services involving
outpatient, semi-outpatient, respite, and immediate care that would be available not only to children without a family
background, but to all vulnerable children, including those who are abused either physically or sexually, neglected,
exposed to developmental risk, or handicapped, and their families.
The agencies falling within the Interior Ministry’s scope of operation are responsible for the detection, investigation,
and clearing-up of criminal offences committed by and against children. Children’s criminality and criminal offences
against children are a major issue within the activities of the Czech Police as a whole and require liaison with other
departments and experts. The Interior Ministry’s Early Intervention System was launched in 2009. It is used by the
police, as well as other entities, such as schools and healthcare facilities, to communicate information about cases of
vulnerable or neglected children to the authorities responsible for the social and legal protection of children operating
in municipalities with extended competencies (Ministerstvo vnitra ČR, 2011a).
12.3 Responses
12.3.1 Social and Legal Protection of Children
The most frequent occasion on which drug users’ children are accounted for is associated with a dependent mother
giving birth. The case of a child being born to a drug-using woman is communicated by the hospital staff to a body
responsible for the social and legal protection of children (the social services), i.e. mostly the competent department
of the local authority of a municipality with extended competencies. This body proceeds to contact the mother and
the members of her broader family, if appropriate, and finds out about the circumstances and conditions into which
the mother is probably to return with her child. During the mother’s and the child’s stay in the maternity hospital, the
relevant department collaborates with physicians and addiction professionals, which facilitates the exchange and
verification of information and the identification of possible solutions. The relevant social workers approach the
mothers, or fathers (although often no father is identified), both in the hospital and in the community. If it is concluded
that the child’s favourable development or their life may be seriously endangered or disturbed, a preliminary
injunction is issued at the motion of the body for the social and legal protection of children in accordance with the
stipulations of Section 76a of the Civil Procedure Code. The court is obliged to decide about the motion without
undue delay, not later than within 24 hours after it has been filed. In the event that a mother shows no interest in her
child or is not willing to address her addiction, the child, after being discharged from the healthcare facility, may be
placed in an institutional care establishment, an agency for children in need of immediate help, or in the care of an
individual. It was found that approximately half of the children who are currently placed in the Children’s Centre in
Prague were born to parents with a history of drug use. 128 This information is also confirmed by the data from the
National Register of Newborns providing details about the end of children’s stay at neonatal departments, which
show significantly higher rates of referrals to nursery homes for children born to substance users; see Figure 12-7
(Ústav zdravotnických informací a statistiky, 2011d).
128
Oral communication, Lukešová, a head physician, June 2011.
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