2. Children, Senior Citizens and Disabled Persons Unit (N-CID) The Office of the Ombudsman includes a unit, comprised of a multidisciplinary team, especially dedicated to address issues regarding persons that, on account of their age, health condition or other limiting characteristics are perceived as more vulnerable: The Children, Senior Citizens and Disable Persons Unit (N-CID). The activity of the N-CID involves different approaches including the development of informal proceedings before the competent entities and the participation in the procedural investigation of complaints regarding the rights of the children, senior citizens or persons with disabilities. The N-CID team ensures the functioning of three specialized helplines (the Children’s Line, the Senior Citizen’s Line and the Disabled Person’s Line) and provides personalized assistance to citizen’s who contact the Ombudsman through those helplines. In this State body, the N-CID team provides information, redirects the complainants to the competent entities and establishes direct contact with the entities addressed in the complaint in order to ensure that the rights of the citizens are being respected. Frequently, the activity of the N-CID team is not reduced to a single intervention but, instead, includes the follow-up on the reported situation. In other cases, the complaint addressed to this State body though the helplines leads to the opening of a formal complaint procedure. In these formal cases the procedure is conducted by the competent unit according with the matter at stake (v.g., Social rights, Workers’ rights) together with the N-CID. During 2016, the Ombudsman received a total of 4026 telephone calls in the three helplines, as this report will further explain. As in the 2015 report, the statistical data will not include telephone calls made by mistake or non-serious telephone calls. In addition, as complainants frequently address several issues in a single telephone call, the total number of received telephone calls will not match the exact number of issues. Children’s Line The Children’s Line received, in 2016, 541 telephone calls while in 2015 this Line received 671 telephone calls. In the same period, 35 telephone calls were placed. 72 |