Equilibrium: national profile & participation

1. Equilibrium is a member and co-founder of the Childhood 2025 Coalition, whose main role is in the process of deinstitutionalization. Due to our active role in the Coalition, we have submitted numerous submissions to various governments over the years, some of which have managed to influence various policies. Example: there was a decision to move children and young people out of the family-type accommodation centresso as to re-profile the different facilities (this was a change in the regulation for implementation of the law on social assistance), which we thwarted. We also went to the European institutions and prevented this disgraceful transfer of children and young people from happening.
2. We are members of the National Network for Children, through which we have also been able to push our views in the interests of children and the social services we run. Through Galya Bissett we are involved in the writing of the Government’s Scorecard, which is produced each year and gives an assessment of how the Government is doing with reforms in various areas concerning childcare. Galya writes the chapter on the deinstitutionalisation process.
3. We are members of the Alliance for Early Childhood Development, through which we are trying to influence the creation of a Family and Child Strategy and policy changes related to early childhood learning (transforming nurseries and creches and creating family centres).
4. We are now in our 3rd term as members of the National Council for Child Protection of the State Agency for Child Protection. We are actively involved in the creation of the Strategy for Addressing Violence by/against Children, a program and a plan for its implementation.
5. We are members of the Council for Civil Society Development under the Council of Ministers. It has been an extremely long struggle to establish it so that we can influence the development of the civil sector and democracy in Bulgaria.
6. We were members of PERG – a permanent expert group under the State Agency for Child Protection with the main objective of implementing the process of deinstitutionalization. We participated in the preparation of the annual Monitoring Reports and in the Report analyzing the state of family-type accommodation in the country.
7. We participated in a working group to change the programs for prospective adoptive parents and change the procedures for adopting children from foster care.
8. We participated in the working group on changing the Methodology for Community Support Centers.
9. We were members of the working group for the development of Bulgaria’s contract with the EU for the programming period 2013-2020. Our main goal was to make sure that there were enough texts to continue the process of deinstitutionalization, which happened.
10. We are honorary members of NASO – National Alliance for Social Responsibility.
11. We were members of the working group to develop methodologies of the innovative services created by the project “Direction: family” in the buildings of the closed homes for social and medical care of children (baby homes), with a focus on the residential service, which we now run as family-type accommodation centres for children and young people with disabilities who are in need of permanent medical care. The right philosophy and parameters for this service were then set.
12. We participated in the working group of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy for the development of the draft Law on Social Services.
13. We were members of the working group that created the functional characteristics (i.e. what the services should look like) of new social services in the country.
14. We actively participated in the expert group of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy for the creation of the Regulation on the Quality of Social Services. We have a lot of great merits not to accept and change many texts there in favor of the practical applicability of the Ordinance.
15. We are members of the “RavniBG” association, through which we disseminate our good practices and promote the priorities that should be enshrined in the work of the Council for Civil Society Development at the Council of Ministers through the campaign “SRGO is not another abbreviation”.
16. We are members at local level of:

– The Standing Committee for the Child of the Ruse Municipality;

– Council for Social Services of Ruse Municipality;

– Regional Commission for Ethnic Affairs of the Ruse Regional Administration.