The access to justice for children with mental disabilities
The aim is to see the situation of the access to justice of children
with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities in Europe.
The study was made in ten European countries,
touching three fields.
The civil one: where and with whom to live;
the administrative one: where to be educated;
and the criminal justice one,
in case of being victims, aggressors or witnesses.
Accessing to justice means that as citizens
whenever we have to exercise one of our rights
we need the judicial system to act
to exercise that right and be able to access
on an equal basis as the rest of the citizens.
In the findings, after the study was made,
we saw that, as in other studies and reports
about children with disabilities, there's an alarming lack of data.
The research and all the information we collected
show that these children find particular barriers
when accessing to justice under equal conditions;
a lack of professionals' training
to make up for these barriers.
A result obtained after carrying out this project
was to make available to professionals,
through the website, a tool
which allows access to information and materials
and tries to eliminate the problems of the current system.
What we have seen is that nearly the same patterns
repeat themselves in all ten countries
that have taken part of this European project.
In Spain, recently there has been
a legislative amendment that would allow a change to occur.
Some laws about a change in the child protection system
were adopted in July 2015,
as well as the standing of victims in April 2015.
This allows us the possibility of initiating change.
For that, professionals' training is very important.
I think if we could get the awareness,
by those who act in the judicial system
and society in general,
that children with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities
must access to justice on an equal basis as other people,
that would be a big step forward; removing barriers,
adapting the system to their particular conditions...
And in this sense, it would also be very important
to make children with intellectual disabilities
participate in an active way
in all decision-making affecting them,
as the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child obliges.
IN COLLABORATION WITH:
Communication and Culture Vice-Chancellor