[Protective care of children in the Czech Republic and the Convention on Children's Rights]

Protective Care of Children is one of the oldest activities aimed at the defence and maintenance of life. It represents a set of actions, activities, and interventions directed to every child, attempting to provide sufficient defence against unfavourable effects on its existence and development. It includes also the knowledge how to prevent them. At the same time attention of workers engaged in the children care is aimed at problems and their solution of developing impairments, disabilities and abnormalities of individual children and the whole child population. It requires an ability to recognize and eliminate endogenous, exogenous or combined adverse effects causing impairments of the children's life. It means treatment and rehabilitation to recover the positive state. The most important role in all such affords have parents and the family. To estimate the level and characteristics of children preventive care in CR, the first (1997) and second (2003) report on evaluation of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child was used. The first evaluation concerned mainly the general problems of children; the second evaluation was focused on individual groups of children in special circumstances. As most important, the Committee found excellent level of health and educational care (though in the second evaluation it found some imperfections in education), the foundation of telephone Childline line for consultation of children in stress and preparation of several laws concerning the family and children. In both evaluations the Committee repeatedly reproached imperfections in the implementation of the most important principles of Covention--the best interest in children, no discrimination, respects to the children's opinion, the right of parents to have children and vice versa, problem of institutionalization. Next problems reproached concerned the not having founded the Coordination organ for the complex protection of child, not having formulated the National plan of care for the family and child, not having solved problem of monitoring, research and education in that field. Though the reproaches of the Committee on the Rights of the Child to our protection of child are not insignificant, the overall view of the Committee and the discussion to the First and Second evaluation are possible to interpret as satisfactory. At the same time, they invite to it next improving, namely considering the basic reproaches and recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.