Places visited by the National Preventive Mechanism in 2011
The Directors of Youth Care Centres in Wielkie Drogi and in Antoniewo informed that
they had taken steps to employ a nurse but it had proved to be impossible due to insufficient budgets. The Director of Youth Sociotherapy Centre agreed with the NPM’s recommendation on the need to provide preventive health care to juveniles, but pointed to the
problem of lengthy waiting times for visits to individual medical specialists. The directors
of Youth Sociotherapy Centres No 4 and No 5 in Warsaw explained that juveniles received
additional passes to use health care services in their places of permanent residence.
The National Preventive Mechanism recommended:
• Ensuring appropriate organisation and access to health care for juveniles;
• Guaranteeing preventive health care to juveniles;
• Taking steps to employ a nurse;
• Providing health care services out of sight and hearing range of non-medical staff;
• Regularly checking the expiry dates of pharmacological materials and the conditions in which syringes and dressing materials are kept.
d) Right of access to information
Generally speaking, juveniles’ right of access to information was respected in visited
establishments. Juveniles were acquainted with the regulations immediately after being
admitted to the establishment. However, if from the interviews with juveniles it resulted
that they were not familiar with the regulations of the establishment, nor with their rights,
privileges and duties, the visiting team recommended that regular meetings be organised dedicated to the rights of juveniles and the ways to execute these rights. Additionally, in some establishments it was recommended to place their Regulations/Statute in a
visible place (the following establishments: YCC in Łękawa, YSC in Wilga, YSC No 5 in
Warsaw and YCC in Rzepczyn).
Moreover, during every visit representatives of the National Preventive Mechanism
checked whether juveniles had access to the addresses of the following institutions responsible for protecting their rights: the Ombudsman for Children, the Human Rights
Defender, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, and a competent family court. The
Mechanism recommended that contact details of these institutions are displayed in
such a way that all the juveniles can have access to them, and that workshops are organized on the activities of these institutions.
Having analysed the statutes of some of the visited establishments, the NMP noted that
these documents lacked any information on a procedure for lodging complaints in cases
of violation of juvenile’s rights. Invoking § 8(2) of Annexes 3 and 4 to the Ordinance of the
Minister of National Education of 7 March 2005 on the framework statutes of public establishments161, the Mechanism recommended adding the missing information to statutes
Dz. U. of 2005, No 52, item 466.
161
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