Child-friendly Justice – Developing the Concept of Social Court Practices

1st April 2022 (9.30 – 12.30 CET)
8th April 2022 (9.30 – 12:30 CET)
20th April 2022 (15.00 – 16.45 CET)

The event «Justice can be child-friendly» is organized within the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme 2014-2020, under the co-funded project “Child-Friendly Justice:Developing the Concept of Social Court practises” (grant number: REC-AG-2019/REC-RCHI-PROF-AG-2019-878552) which aims to improve access to justice for children with enhanced vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system by developing and disseminating specialised models of individualised assessment of their needs in line with international and European law.

It consists of 3 days of international LABs that will be organised for experts, practitioners and lawyers from the partners’ countries. Their aims are to to exchange ideas, practices, skills on how to develop strategic litigation for children in vulnerable situation, creating new algorithm, building cross-sectoral capacities.
Among these 3 international LABs, the first two will be conducted entirely online, while the third one will be hybrid (Palermo, Italy and online). Participation in each lab is autonomous.

The first LAB will be held on the 1st of April 2022 and it will be a Cross-Analysis LAB which aims at gathering practical viewpoints on CFJ individual assessment procedures, the importance of the multidisciplinary teams and the different actors’ involvement and their role, as well as on how to overcome the gap between what’s provided in practice and in theory. Moreover the LAB is meant to improve the capacities of professionals trained to implement individual assessments and child-friendly justice.

The second Cross-Analysis LAB will be held on the 8th of April 2022 and it aims at sharing critical viewpoints on how the CFJ-MODEL of individual assessment of children’s needs was designed and implemented in the different European contexts: to further improve project aspects and better support children and youth in the national justice systems, discussing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

The third Cross-Analysis LAB will be held on the 20th of April 2022 and all project’s partners will be invited to meet some local stakeholders in their offices or institutional headquarters and they will have the opportunity to learn from each other and to make the use of the Italian concrete experience. Il will also be a sort of recapitulation of all the three Labs’ results and there will be a comparison of what emerged in light of the children real needs.