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Access to Justice for Children with Mental Disabilities in Latvia Autori: Ieva Leimane-Veldmeijere, Annija Mazapša, Santa Skirmante This report has been written as part of a project, co-funded by the Fundamental Rights & Citizenship Programme of the European Union, on “access to justice for children with mental disabilities.” The report has been prepared based on the opinions of its authors, which in no way reflect the official opinions of the European Commission. Project has been funded by the European Commission – project No. JUST/2011/FRAC/AG/2799, «Access to Justice for Children with Mental Disabilities», the lead partners - Mental Disability Advocacy Center (Hungary) and University of Leeds (Great Britain). The co-funding for RC ZELDA was provided by Soros Foundation-Latvia. Contents Preface ...................................................................................................................... 4 Study Methodology .................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 8 1. Support mechanisms for accessing individual redress for children with mental disabilities ............................................................................................................... 9 2. Access to justice for children with mental disabilities in cases involving issues about where or with whom a child with mental disabilities should live, including situations of family breakdown, adoption, care proceedings with outcomes such as entry into institutional or foster care, and deinstitutionalisation processes ............................. 17 3. Children with mental disabilities and their right to participate and right to be heard in proceedings regarding where or with whom a child with mental disabilities should live ......................................................................................................................... 20 4. Children with mental disabilities and their right to object to decisions on their placement in out-of-family care, long-term social care and social rehabilitation institutions .............................................................................................................. 27 5. Access to justice for children with mental disabilities in cases involving questions about where or how a child with mental disabilities should be educated ............. 33 6. Access to Justice for Children with Mental Disabilities in Administrative and Criminal Cases ................................................................................................................... 40 7. Training of specialists on the rights of children with mental disabilities in Latvia.. 48 Recommendations .................................................................................................. 53 Authors ................................................................................................................... 54 Preface In the period from May 2013 to May 2015, the “Resource Centre for People with Mental Disability “ZELDA”” (hereinafter RC ZELDA) in collaboration with nine other European Union member states1 conducted an EU-funded study on access to legal assistance resources for children with mental disabilities (both children with intellectual disabilities and children with mental illnesses). The study evaluated access for children with mental disabilities to out of court legal assistance resources as well as in administrative, civil and criminal cases. As part of the study, RC ZELDA’s researchers gathered information on the extent to which persons with mental disabilities have access to the legal system in administrative, civil and criminal cases. The researchers sought examples of both good practice and problem areas, including those arising from decisions about places of residence and education for children with mental disabilities. Research was also conducted about cases where children with mental disabilities have been victims, witnesses or possible perpetrators of crimes. In the course of the study, RC ZELDA’s researchers– Ieva Leimane-Veldmeijere, Annija Mazapša and Santa Skirmante – prepared a number of reports about special education options and children’s rights as well as access to legal assistance for children with metal disabilities: 1. Resolving access and quality issues in education; 2. Making decisions about children’s places of residence; 3. Resolving issues where children with mental disabilities have been victims, witnesses or possible perpetrators of crimes. Based on all of the project reports, in the spring of 2015 RC ZELDA prepared an abridged version of the national report, which is available in Latvian and English at the RC ZELDA website – http://www.zelda.org.lv. RC ZELDA would like to thank everyone who assisted the study by providing information, granting interviews and/or taking part in focus groups. We are also grateful to our project partners – through discussions and exchanging ideas we frequently discovered useful ideas and solutions. Ieva Leimane-Veldmeijere RC ZELDA Director 1 Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, UK 4 Study Methodology The study in Latvia was conducted in three stages from August 2013 to mid-April 2014. The first stage involved a desk-based review of information in the public domain on law, policy and media reports. During the second stage researchers conducted a more detailed investigation, including contacting state and municipal bodies for information unavailable publically. The third stage consisted of primary empirical research including interviews and focus groups with parents of children with mental disabilities and justice professionals who come into contact with such children. The following research methods were used: 1) 13 face-to-face semi-structured interviews (conducted in the period from 19 February to 13 March 2014). - 1 interview with a judge from the Administrative District Court; - 1 interview with a representative of the Ombudsman’s Office; - 1 interview with 3 representatives from the State Inspectorate for the Protection of Children’s Rights; - 2 interviews with heads of orphans’ courts; - 2 interviews with parents of children with mental disabilities; - 2 interviews with psychologists (one is working for an orphans’ court and also has a private practice; the other has a private practice and is also working for a municipal Pedagogical Medical Committee); - 1 interview with a sworn attorney specialising in family law; - 1 interview with a municipal police officer (a psychologist by education); - 1 interview with a special pedagogue and representative of a municipal Pedagogical Medical Committee (assessing children and deciding on the most suitable education program for the child); - 1 interview with 2 representatives of a municipal social services department. Written consent was obtained prior to starting each interview. All interviews were tape recorded for transcription, except for two: one person declined to have the conversation recorded, while another was recorded only partially. In both cases, the interviewers made extensive notes. All taped interviews were transcribed in full. A semi-structured interview method was used and most interviews were one to two hours long with two exceptions when the interviews took nearly three hours. The interviews were conducted by researchers I.Leimane-Veldmeijere, S.Skirmante and A.Mazapša. The researchers selected specialists to be interviewed during internal brainstorming, but some candidates were suggested by interviewees during the interviews. Thus purposive sampling was combined with snow-ball sampling to ensure a range of interviewees. Interviews were carried out in the capital city Riga, and during two field trips to Liepāja (on 5 March) and to Cesis and Krimulda (on 6 March). In order to find parents for interviews and focus groups, RC ZELDA applied to the NGO – Velki Foundation, which is active in organising and running parents’ support groups throughout Latvia. An explanatory e-mail about the study was sent to Velki Foundation requesting that parents contact the researchers if they would be interested to give a face-to-face interview or to participate in the focus group discussion. In total 7 parents contacted RC ZELDA, of whom 5 6 expressed interest in coming to the focus group discussion, but since not everybody could attend the focus group, one parent was visited during a field trip (about 220 km from Riga). In the end due to various reasons only 3 parents came to the focus group organised on 27 February, while additionally 2 parents were interviewed separately. 2) Written requests-questionnaires: a) written questionnaires (including questions on statistics and methods of work) were mailed to 38 Municipal Administrative Commissions (including 9 Republic cities and 28 municipalities with populations greater than 10,000) to establish their practice in applying compulsory measures of a correctional nature. The method was used from 6 January 2014 to 31 March 2014. In total 26 answers were received. b) written questionnaires (including questions on statistics and on methods of work) were mailed to 61 orphans’ courts on 23 February – 27 answers were received by31 March. As the publically available annual reports of the orphans’ courts do not provide any data about children with mental disabilities or reflect the number of family proceedings involving children

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