International Conference: "FOCUS on My Needs: Working together for children in criminal proceedings"

On 10 March, from 14:00 to 18:00 CET, professionals and children from across Europe will gather on Zoom for the closing conference of the EU project, "FOCUS on My Needs: working together for children in criminal proceedings". This is a unique opportunity to learn more about multidisciplinary individual assessment — a cornerstone to achieve a child's best interest.

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The best interest of the child is a core principle of child protection systems and child-friendly justice with regard to children in contact with the law. But how do we achieve it if we don't know, in-depth, each child's individual situation?
In the last two years, this has been the aim of FOCUS on My Needs: working together for children in criminal proceedings. The project has given professionals working with children the tools and resources to implement a multidisciplinary, individual assessment of a child's needs. 

The FOCUS conference is a unique opportunity to learn more about individual assessment practices, and processes of children’s needs and circumstances in criminal proceedings.

We have the honour to announce, among our guest speakers: Prof. Velina Todorova, Deputy Chair of the UN Committe on the Rights of the Child; and Theoni Koufonikolakou, Deputy Ombudswoman for Children's Rights and Chair of the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC). They will share their extensive expertise with the audience, while the FOCUS technical team will share findings from our national reviews in Serbia, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece.

If you are looking for a more pragmatic approach, we've got you covered; we will present new practical tools and resources for individual assessments, such as the FOCUS standards, practices and recommendations on how to improve the process of individual assessments at the national level, and how to assure sustainability. We will also launch our technical platform and e-learning course — precious learning tools for every professional working with children in contact with the law. 

As we share what we have learned during these two years, we would also love to learn from you and your expertise. You will be invited to help formulate recommendations, and to interact with children, young people and professionals in assessing the needs and circumstances of children in criminal proceedings.

The young members of the FOCUS Child Advisory Boards will play an active role during the conference, presenting the advocacy materials they have produced as part of the project and joining the roundtable discussion.
 

The event will be held in English, with simultaneous translation provided in Greek, Romanian, Serbian, Dutch and Bulgarian.

Registration is free of charge and open to all professionals, academics and students interested in child-friendly justice, child protection, and child's needs assessment. The final agenda will be shared with registered participants at a date closer to the event. 

How to join the conference:

Use the button above to sign up for the conference and please save the date in your calendar. A few hours before the webinar, you will receive an email with the link to the ZOOM event and instructions on how to join. Joining our webinars is very easy, doesn't require any special skills from you and only takes a minute or two. You can join the webinar from your computer, tablet or mobile phone.

FOCUS is a project co-funded by the Rights, Equality, Citizenship Programme of the European Commission (2020-2021). It is coordinated by Terre des hommes in Europe, and implemented in partnership with Child Circle, Child Rights Centre, Defence for Children The Netherlands, and SAPI. The project aims at building the capacities of professionals to work in a multidisciplinary way on individual assessments of the need of children involved in criminal proceedings.