The key actors in work with children—by which we mean children up to 18 years of age—are the social-legal protection authorities (hereafter SPO). The system of social-legal protection authorities consists of krajské úřady a kraje, obecní úřady obcí s rozšířenou působností, obecní úřady and obce, Ministerstvo práce a sociálních věcí, Úřad pro mezinárodněprávní ochranu dětí, and, finally, physical and legal persons authorized to carry out social-legal protection. Sociálně-právní ochrana dětí was defined by zákonem č. 359/1999 Sb. The main areas of social-legal child protection include prevention of disturbances in a child’s favorable development, measures to protect children in crisis situations, arranging adoption and foster care, monitoring the development of children living in substitute family care or in institutional care, and, not least, the protection of children from socially pathological phenomena. This law strongly supports cooperation with other institutions. Under the Act on social-legal child protection, municipalities with extended authority also have the duty to establish, as a special municipal body, a municipal commission for social-legal child protection composed of members of municipal councils and physical persons who cooperate in social-legal protection of children, especially educators, psychologists, healthcare workers, civic associations, churches, and other legal or physical persons. (Zákon č. 359/1999 Sb.)

A key principle of the SPO Act is the interest and welfare of the child. In § 6 of the SPO Act, it is specified which children social-legal protection focuses on. These are mainly children whose parents have died, or who do not fulfill duties arising from parental responsibility, or do not exercise or abuse rights arising from parental responsibility. These are also children who have been entrusted to the care of someone other than their parents, children who lead an idle or immoral life, and children who repeatedly run away. These are also children on whom a criminal offense was committed, and children who are repeatedly placed in facilities providing continuous care for children or whose placement in such facilities lasts longer than six months. Social-legal protection also focuses on children who are being threatened by violence between parents or other persons, and on children who are asylum-seeking and separated from their parents. Social-legal protection focuses on all these children if the facts described above persist for such a period or are so intense that they adversely affect their development, or are or may be the cause of adverse development. (Krausová, Novotná, 2006, pp. 160–161)

From the wording of the Act on social-legal protection, it is clearly apparent that other institutions have a duty to provide information to the bodies carrying out this protection. Under the SPO Act, a professional working with children is required to contact the social-legal protection body of the competent municipality with extended authority in certain situations. This duty is determined by § 10 of the SPO Act (Krausová, Novotná, 2006, p. 163), which literally says: “...state authorities, entrusted persons, schools, school institutions, and healthcare institutions, as well as other child-focused institutions, are obliged to inform the municipal office of the municipality with extended authority of facts indicating that it concerns children listed in § 6(1) (author’s note: see above), and to do so without undue delay after learning of such facts...”

If this duty is not fulfilled, the institution mentioned above or a physical person acting as an entrusted person commits a misdemeanor under § 59 of the SPO Act and may be fined up to CZK 50,000.

Under no circumstances can the above institutions invoke a duty of confidentiality.

Practice example: A sixteen-year-old girl, Monika, confided to a youth outreach worker in a low-threshold children and youth facility that she was being bullied at school by classmates. It started with taking her snack, later money, and colleagues’ inappropriate behavior escalated into repeated physical attacks. Monika discussed the situation with the outreach worker and wanted to run away from home so she would not have to go to school. She, however, did not want to report the whole matter to the police and feared everything would only worsen. Her classmates eventually attacked Monika so severely that she ended up with a mild concussion and was hospitalized; from there the police became involved. During further investigation, Monika stated that she had already confided in a social worker, who defended herself by claiming that, based on the standards of low-threshold child and youth facilities, she was protecting the client’s interests and did not want to disrupt the confidentiality of the disclosed information and her sense of safety in that facility.

In the implementation of social-legal child protection, it is precisely the SPO authorities that collect and assess information about a child’s development and life situation, and on the basis of this information SPO workers should use appropriate measures. However, SPO workers are required to maintain confidentiality about facts they became aware of while carrying out social-legal protection of children or in direct relation to it. The SPO Act states exceptions; mandatory confidentiality is lifted, for example, in relation to courts, authorities conducting criminal proceedings, administrative offices, and probation and mediation services. The duty to maintain confidentiality also continues after the termination of employment in an SPO body and is unlimited in time. (Špeciánová, 2005, p. 27)

Providing Information under Criminal Law Provisions – the Duty to Report

An important definition of when one must act in the child’s interest, that is, provide information even against the child’s wishes, is found in the Criminal Code, where we speak of so-called “mandatory reporting.” This means we must prevent or report if we learn that someone is preparing, committing, or has committed a certain criminal offense. The list of these offenses is provided in the Criminal Code (Trestní zákoník, 2009) in §§ 367 and 368. In practice with children, we most often encounter the duty to prevent the following offenses (§ 367 TrZ) that the perpetrator is preparing or committing:

  • unlawful manufacture and possession of narcotics and psychotropic substances and poisons,
  • abuse of a person entrusted to one’s care,
  • murder,
  • robbery,
  • rape,
  • sexual exploitation/abuse,
  • theft, if this act causes damage of great extent.

A criminal offense can also be prevented by timely reporting it to the prosecutor or police. (Trestní zákoník, 2009)

The duty to report a criminal offense (§ 368 TrZ) without delay to the prosecutor or police applies in cases where we learn that someone has committed, for example, the criminal offenses (Trestní zákoník, 2009):

  • counterfeiting and altering money,
  • abuse of a person entrusted to one’s care,
  • murder.

The Criminal Code lists more offenses subject to mandatory reporting. I selected crimes that can threaten children either as victims or as offenders. This is also based on experience where a person from a child’s close environment knew of these offenses committed against children or by children and did not intervene correctly—that is, did not prevent the crime or report it. This person can then be punished themselves with imprisonment for up to three years.

Practice examples: A fourteen-year-old, Radka, was sexually abused and raped with some regularity by her mother’s partner. Everything happened in a densely populated apartment complex while Radka’s mother was at work. During investigation, it was found that neighbors in multiple cases had heard Radka calling for help, sounds of struggle, and screaming; they also knew that the stepfather always turned up the music to drown out her cries. As an explanation for why they neither helped Radka nor reported the matter to the police, they said that Radka’s stepfather was a strange person and that they were afraid of him, because he would certainly have taken revenge on them...
The school principal faced criminal prosecution because he learned from the parents that one of his subordinates was sexually abusing little boys. The principal handled the situation by dismissing the employee, thereby putting at similar risk other boys who could be abused.

There are not many cases where professionals working with children know how to proceed. It is understandable that turning to the police and then testifying for the police or in court requires a certain civic courage. One option in such cases is to turn to the social-legal protection authority, which exists in every municipality with extended powers (delegated to perform state administration), and which submits a criminal report.

Good practice example: In the course of therapeutic work with fifteen-year-old Jiřina, the social worker learned about her sexual abuse in childhood. She persuaded Jiřina’s parents to contact the social-legal protection authority (formerly OSPOD) of the relevant municipality; however, OSPOD also informed them directly. OSPOD filed a criminal complaint with the police, and during the investigation it was found that the sexual abuse had been long-term and that the same person had sexually abused two other minors as well. In Jiřina’s case, a court expert found lasting effects in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Act No. 218/2003 Sb., on the liability of youth for wrongdoing and juvenile justice, establishes cooperation between authorities conducting criminal proceedings and SPO authorities. It also sets out the scope of the ban on publication of information. In general, a ban applies to publishing in any form information that includes the name or surname of the minor or contains information that could identify the minor, unless the law explicitly provides otherwise. (Špeciánová, 2005, p. 68) This ban does not of course apply to cooperation with SPO authorities. Again, it is important that workers of SPO receive all available information about the child obtained within criminal proceedings so they can work with the child in a qualified manner.

The Role of Other Institutions in Providing Child-Related Information

The concepts of team work and multidisciplinary collaboration are currently referenced in connection with modern social work. A multidisciplinary team is based on the idea of specialist collaboration and coordination of procedures. It is not a hierarchical system; representatives of each profession bring specific competencies into the team and collaborate with other institutions as well as with people in the client’s social network. (Matoušek, Koláčková, Kodymová et al., 2005) In practice, a need has been shown for even closer multidisciplinary collaboration in handling specific cases involving multiple subjects simultaneously (for example, OSPOD, police, a care center, school, low-threshold child and youth facility). From this need arose efforts toward various forms of multidisciplinary collaboration, such as different multidisciplinary teams, forms of case management, case conferences, or the Early Intervention System (1).

In these cases too, multidisciplinary collaboration is governed by the rule that each institution is entitled to obtain only information that is absolutely necessary for further work with the child. SPO authorities gather the most information about the child; their workers are called on to address difficult situations in the child’s life appropriately, including on the basis of sufficient needed information. It could broadly be said that even in information sharing, the interest and welfare of the child are protected, as set out in the Act on social-legal child protection.

Author: PhDr. Daniela Květenská, Ph.D. List of bibliographic references

[1] KRAUSOVÁ, Lucie – NOVOTNÁ, Věra. 2006. Sociálně-právní ochrana dětí. Praha : ASPI, a.s., 2006. 228 s. ISBN 80-7357-214-1. [2] MATOUŠEK, Oldřich – KOLÁČKOVÁ, Jana, – KODYMOVÁ, Pavla et al. 2006. Sociální práce v praxi. Praha: Portál, 2005, 351 s. ISBN 80-7367-002-X. [3] ŠPECIÁNOVÁ, Šárka. 2005. Právní manuál pro sociálně-právní ochranu dětí. Praha : Linde nakladatelství s. r. o., 2005. ISBN 80-86131-61-0. [4] Trestní zákoník. Zákon č. 40/2009 Sb. ze dne 8. ledna 2009. In Sbírka zákonů České republiky. 2009, částka 11. Dostupný také z WWW: http://portal.gov.cz/wps/portal/_s.155/701/_s.155/701?l=40/2009

(1) Systém včasné intervence is the term for the system linking institutions dealing with juvenile offending. The system is based on computer-based linkage and subsequent cooperation of all parties within a certain city.

The lecture was delivered at the international scientific conference Aplikovaná etika v sociálnej práci a ďalších pomáhajúcich profesiách, which took place on 20–21 October 2010 in Piešťany and was published in the proceedings of that conference: MÁTEL, A. – SCHAVEL, M. – MÜHLPACHR, P. – ROMAN, T. 2010. Aplikovaná etika v sociálne práci a ďalších pomáhajúcich profesiách. Zborník z medzinárodnej vedeckej konferencie. Bratislava : VŠZaSP sv. Alžbety. 413 s. ISBN 978-80-89271-89-4.