Working with proffessionals to strengthen child protection mechanisms

To further strengthen child protection and safeguards mechanisms for children, Save the Children in collaboration with the International Child Development Initiative, a knowledge organization in psychosocial development of children and young people, organized an informative session with the child protection professionals. The focus was the “Determination of the Best Interest of the Child’ guideline and how to measure its application. This guideline describes how the formal process with strict procedural safeguards is designed to determine the child's best interests for particularly important decisions affecting the child. Participants in the session such as representatives of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, State Social Services, Municipality of Tirana, child protection workers and local civil society organizations, shared and discussed their ideas, experiences, lessons learned and challenges in regard to the application in practice of the best interest of the child. Professional feedback and recommendations will be reflected in the final guideline and will be shared with all the interested actors working in the field of child protection. A capacity building program for professionals, on how to apply and measure the application of child best interest, will be provided further to involved child protection actors and stakeholders.