Bulgaria

SOS Children’s Villages has published the report on the situation of young people ageing out of care in Europe and Central Asia. The report consists of 13 country reviews, from Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, the Russian Federation, and Uzbekistan. 

New law introduced in Bulgaria allows children who have spent more than six months without their parents taking them back, can be put up for adoption without the parents' approval. The law was passed with an aim to reduce the number of children growing up in institutions. Another obstacle for increasing adoption, apart form biological parents unwillingness to give up their parental rights, are prejudice against Roma minority. Some prospective parents suspect them of abandoning children at a young age only to claim them back when they are old enough to earn money.

The report Problem of Child Abuse: Attitudes and Experiences in Seven Countries of Central and Eastern Europe presents selected findings from a comparative research programme carried out in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine in 2009 and compares it with results from an analogous research from 2005 within the Childhood without Abuse - Toward a Better Child Protection System in Eastern Europe project. The project, coordinated by the Nobody's Children Foundation and financed by the OAK Foundation, was carried out in 2005 - 2009.

On 25th and 26th January project coordinators met to inaugurate new stage of the Childhood without Abuse project that will last from 2010 till 2013 and include organizations from Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine.