A memo from a CBSS Secretariat staffer to the Secretariat reports on the Meeting of the Reference Group on Children at Risk in Riga 5-6 February 2001, where the group agreed to seek its integration into the CBSS. The chair of the meeting said, “… politically, the Project had been a CBSS endeavour since the very beginning when the Prime Ministers decided to launch it at their Riga Summit in 1998. The Establishment of the Reference Group had further consolidated the Baltic Sea nature of the project.” The term “Project” here refers to the “Children at Risk Project”, which at this point had become conflated with the “IT network.”
The Chair also said “… the Reference Group had been created as a technical structure for the purpose of designing and launching the “Cyber House” Project. As the work progressed, the scope of the Group’s responsibilities had widened, which was reflected i.a. in the Bergen CBSS Communique.” The referenced June 2000 CBSS Foreign Ministers Communique “instructs the CSO and the WGDI to support the newly established reference group of senior officials from ministries responsible for child matters in its efforts to enforce a coordinated and multidisciplinary approach towards children at risk in the Baltic Sea region and to further develop the Child Centre for Children at Risk IT network for intergovernmental exchange of information and experiences in the area of child welfare and protection.”