Expert group meetings
Tallinn October 2005 – The meeting elaborated the conclusions from the ministerial meeting in May 2005, including on actions in the field of children in residential care, and how to support increasing the quality in existing institutions.
Reykjavik, May 2006 – Took place parallel to a meeting of the Senior Officials of the CBSS, which included a visit to Barnahus Iceland. Joint discussions elaborated the conference on children in institutions planned to be during the Swedish presidency of the CBSS.
In conjunction with the Reykjavik meeting, Expert Group in cooperation with The Icelandic Ministry of Social Affairs and the Icelandic Agency for Child Protection organised a expert meeting on child-friendly forensic investigations. The meeting discussed child-friendly investigations, how countries are progressing on this front, and ways that the Expert Group could support.
The Child Centre website
The web site has introduced two major additions: a self-registration tool for organisations working within the priority areas of the Expert Group, and the cooperation with a company to manually and automatically find relevant publications throughout the Baltic Sea Region.
The Comprehensive Assistance to Children Victims of Trafficking project
Launched 1 February 2006, this project established training for professionals in the region working to assist children that have been trafficked or that are unaccompanied. It also enabled exchange of good practices. This project was developed as a result of the conclusions from the April 2005 meeting held in Kiev, which was organised as part of the programme on unaccompanied and trafficked children in the region of the Baltic Sea States.
The National Contact Points on Unaccompanied and Trafficked Children
The 3rd meeting of the National Contact Points on Unaccompanied and Trafficked Children took place in Vilnius, hosted by the Lithuanian Ministry of the Interior.
The meeting had three aims:
1) to comprehensively describe the upcoming training of professionals on care, protection and rehabilitation of children victims of trafficking and the mapping of all cases of trafficking of children in the region.
2) to give a comprehensive overview of all actions in the region related to the trafficking of children, both those implemented by state actors and those implemented by NGOs.
3) to give the network of National Contact Points an opportunity to discuss how to further improve the functions of the network.
The CBSS Task Force against Trafficking in Human Beings gave a presentation of its work, including a pilot project promoting support mechanisms for women trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Online sexual exploitation
In May 2006, in co-operation with the Swedish Children’s Welfare Foundation and the Stockholm County Council training division, the Expert Group organised an expert meeting and a conference discussing clinical experiences with and methods for assisting children that have been abused in the context of the Internet.
Leaving institutions
In cooperation with the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, the Russian Agency for Education and the Yaroslavl Youth Information Centre, the Expert Group organised a meeting on supporting girls and boys leaving institutions. The meeting gathered some 30 experts, researchers, practitioners and policy makers from institutions, universities and NGOs. The meeting resulted in a number of recommendations on the subject.
The Yokohama Review
The work of the Expert Group was featured as an example of co-operation and co-ordination at national and international level at the conference Yokohama Review for Europe and Central Asia – Combating sexual exploitation. The conference was organised by the Council of Europe and held in Ljubljana, Slovenia in July 2005.
Nordic Council of Ministers
As a result of a meeting between the staff members supporting the NCM and CBSS work on children at risk, they agreed to meet regularly to share practices and programmes, and to make use of each others offices in the region.
