ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PUBLIC DEFENDER OF GEORGIA 2013 Protection of confidentiality Under the Childcare Standards, the beneficiaries’ personal data must be protected. Normally, the small family-type children’s homes have no rooms specially allocated for individual consultations. However, conversations and meetings with the beneficiaries take place in the beneficiaries’ or the educators’ rooms; these meetings are conducted in an environment respectful of the confidentiality principle. Beneficiaries’ personal files are properly stored by children’s homes. Usually, the educators keep the beneficiaries’ documentation in their rooms or in safes, locked. The documentation is kept away from children. After a beneficiary is no longer a beneficiary, his/her documents will be stored where archives are kept. Requirements concerning the personnel Pursuant to Article 16 of the Childcare Standards, there shall be sufficient number of personnel with appropriate qualifications involved in the upbringing of the beneficiaries. Salaries and work conditions of individuals employed at children’s homes remains a problem.141 Because of hard work conditions, there are frequent changes in the personnel. Reportedly, one of the main reasons of people leaving jobs at children’s home is the problem with taking a vacation. in particular, the voucher funding is insufficient to cover both the educator’s vacation and the replacement staff ’s salary. As one of the educators told us, they are not offered any incentives, which negatively affects their motivation. Inclusive service According to the monitoring results, beneficiaries of children’s homes are not discriminated against in any form in the course of provision of the services to them. However, they are badly influenced by the stereotypes existing in the broad public about children under State care. Transportation is another problem. Senior children need to travel to the regional centers to access the required resources. Transportation becomes more complicated when it comes to junior age children. Educators, too, are unable to provide transportation to the center on their own since the available human resources at the children’s homes are not usually enough for that. Recommendations: To the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Protection QQ To train the personnel of small family-type children’s homes in drafting individual service plans for beneficiaries in a complete manner and to ensure that the beneficiaries and the educators are consulted with during the drafting process; QQ To supervise the fulfillment of obligations under the “Rules of allocating functions and duties of social workers and service providers at small family-type children’s homes”; QQ With a view of better protection of confidentiality, to develop a template form of consent to be issued by persons authorized to issue personal information about the beneficiaries of small family-type children’s homes; QQ To provide the employees of children’s homes with periodic qualification trainings and thematic courses; QQ To provide the personnel of the children’s homes with adequate salaries, vacation and insurance; to introduce an employment incentives system for them. 141 For more information, see the Public Defender’s report for the year of 2012, pages 253-4. NPM Report 72