CREATING OPPORTUNITIES

The Directorate-General for Social Affairs and Child Protection strongly believes in the importance of creating equal opportunities, therefore there is a whole Department dedicated to this issue. The aim of the Department for Equal Opportunities is to promote and strengthen the empowerment of institutionalized clients preparing them for the ongoing deinstitutionalization process, contributing to their social inclusion.
The Department for Equal Opportunities has a comprehensive, intertwined approach and consists of three Units: the Unit for the Rights of Institutionalised Persons and the Rights of Children, the Disability Unit and the Unit for the Skills Development and Employment of persons in the social care system.

The working methods of the Department include professional investigations to control that the requirements of equal treatment and the realization of special rights of the recipients are implemented and respected in the social care institutions. Its task is to raise the rights awareness of not only the people who live in the institutions, but the carers who work with them, through identifying and encouraging “best practices”, establishing trainings, organizing working groups, holding regional conferences, announcing and managing thematic tenders. Moreover, the Department organizes and coordinates cultural and sports events, mental hygiene, healthy lifestyle, sensitization programs for the clients, their carers and every colleague of the DG.