Protective Care of Children in the Czech Republic and the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Overview

Protective Care of Children is one of the oldest activities aimed at the defence and maintenance of life. It representsa set of actions, activities, and interventions directed to every child, attempting to provide sufficient defence againstunfavourable effects on its existence and development. It includes also the knowledge how to prevent them. At thesame time attention of workers engaged in the children care is aimed at problems and their solution of developingimpairments, disabilities and abnormalities of individual children and the whole child population. It requires anability to recognize and eliminate endogenous, exogenous or combined adverse effects causing impairments of thechildren’s life. It means treatment and rehabilitation to recover the positive state. The most important role in all suchaffords have parents and the family. To estimate the level and characteristics of children preventive care in CR, thefirst (1997)a nd second (2003) report on evaluation of theCommittee on theRights of the Child and the implementationof the Convention on the Rights of the Child was used. The first evaluation concerned mainly the general problemsof children; the second evaluation was focused on individual groups of children in special circumstances. As mostimportant, the Committee found excellent level of health and educational care (though in the second evaluation itfound some imperfections in education), the foundation of telephone Childline line for consultation of children instress and preparation of several laws concerning the family and children. In both evaluations the Committeerepeatedly reproached imperfections in the implementation of the most important principles of Covention – the bestinterest in children, no discrimination, respects to the children’s opinion, the right of parents to have children andvice versa, problem of institutialization. Next problems reproached concerned the not having founded the Coordinationorgan for the complex protection of child, not having formulated the National plan of care for the family andchild, not having solved problem of monitoring, research and education in that field. Though the reproaches of theCommittee on the Rights of the Child to our protection of child are not insignificant, the overall view of the Committeeand the discussion to the First and Second evaluation are possible to interpret as satisfactory. At the same time, theyinvite to it next improving, namely considering the basic reproaches and recommendations of the UN Committee onthe Rights of the Child.

Key words:
protection of the existence and development of child, children in critical conditions, Convention onthe Rights of the Child, first and second report on fulfilling the Covenant, UN Committee on the Rights of theChild, evaluation of reports.