ZAGREB, 6 April, 2021 - The founder of the #Spasime (Save me) initiative, Jelena Veljača, said on Tuesday it was agreed at today's meeting with Social Policy Minister Josip Aladrović that an action plan to restructure and improve the system should be urgently adopted.

Speaking to the press after the meeting, Veljača said she was sorry if she had contributed to a campaign against social workers with a recent statement which she said "was prompted by the outcome of the monstrous event in Nova Gradiška."

In a recent Facebook post, she pushed for sacking and revoking the licences of the whole "expert" team from the social welfare centre in Nova Gradiška and establishing if they were criminally accountable for the death of a girl of two and a half who had been severely beaten by her mother.

Veljača said today "we must not ignore problems" and that this case "is not an incident," adding that the initiative had wanted to warn about problematic cases that did not end in death.

She said she was pleased that the initiative had been in dialogue with Minister Aladrović since November and that he had shown the political will and personal desire to improve the social welfare system.

She said child rights must come first, before parental rights. "We agreed that the ministry should draft an action plan to improve the system."

Veljača said decisions must be made within the system and that she hoped someone would be held to account for this "absolutely unnecessary death and that no one will hide behind the system."

#Spasime representatives said it was agreed with Justice Ministry officials that a register of domestic abuse cases should be made that would give access to everyone dealing with the problem - social services, courts and prosecutors.

Last week Aladrović's ministry instructed directors of social welfare centres that in cases of domestic violence, professionals must apply the Istanbul Convention and violence protocols. This means that in evaluating parental competence, a parent's history of violence is taken as an aggravating circumstance and that a child's interest must come before that of parents.

At today's meeting it was also agreed that oversight of social services' actions should be conducted regularly.

Vedrana Šimundža-Nikolić of the Justice Ministry said it was agreed to define as a separate crime when an official, through inaction or wrong action, failed to protect a child's rights and this had consequences

"The law already envisages punishing someone who does not execute a decision to protect a child's well-being and rights, but in (the Nova Gradiška case) we don't have failure to execute a decision, but to make it. That would be prosecuted as a separate crime."

The head of the Family and Social Policy Administration, Marija Barilić, said the Family and Social Policy Ministry had begun making analyses of children in foster care and care homes "so that we can see their situation, if they should stay in the system."

Minister Aladrović said the ministry was very determined to change the system and that he was confident the system could be improved through the joint efforts of everyone in society.

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ZAGREB, 6 April, 2021 - The Minister of Family and Social Policy, Josip Aladrović, on Tuesday announced amendments to the Foster Care Act to facilitate foster care for children.

The minister made the announcement after meeting with representatives of the "We Have Something to Tell You" initiative Marta Divjak and Antonija Skender. Divjak and Skender were also received by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković.

Aladrović said that the two representatives presented a good initiative to address several key issues to relax adoption and foster care procedures.

Aladrović said that the duration of adoption or foster care cases showed how difficult it was to adopt or foster a child in Croatia. He said that he would initiate amendments to the 2019 Foster Care Act to promote deinstitutionalisation and make it easier for children staying in care homes to be taken into foster care.

As for the adoption of children by same-sex couples, Aladrović said that this issue would be put to public consultation. "The child's interest comes first and that's how it will be with the social care system."

Aladrović said that the meeting also focused on possible legislative and procedural changes concerning the social care system, as well as future cooperation on legislative amendments and ideas.

Divjak said that she herself had been adopted and her colleague Skender had been raised in a foster family. They had launched this initiative to raise public awareness of problems faced by fostered and adopted children.

Divjak said that they raised nine issues and that Prime Minister Plenković said that Minister Aladrović would take a position on them within the next three weeks. Among the issues raised, she cited the need to speed up the adoption procedure, establish a family court to deal with the interests of children, and promote foster care.

"We are leaving this meeting with a lot of expectations and hope that this will be the first government that will manage to fully reform the social care system," Skender said. 

Speaking of the case of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl from Nova Gradiška who had died from severe head and bodily injuries inflicted by her mother, Skender said that they could not speculate what had gone wrong because they did not have the information on the criteria the biological family had to fulfil.

"It is certainly not encouraging to take a child from a foster family in which it feels good and send it back to the medium-risk biological family," she added.

Aladrović condemned the graffiti on the wall of the Social Welfare Centre in Nova Gradiška calling social workers "murderers". He said that such calls for a lynching were inappropriate and would not help improve the system.

"The system needs reforming, but reforms will not happen by lynching and violence. Reforms will not be successful unless all social stakeholders are satisfied," the minister said.

The adoption support organisation Adopta issued a statement on Tuesday emphasising the need for a comprehensive reform of the social care system that would include regular annual reports on its work, civil oversight and amending the 2015 Family Act.

"Croatia needs a comprehensive reform of the system so that any child without adequate family care can get maximum government support in seeking a family," Adopta said.

For more about politics in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.