ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PUBLIC DEFENDER OF GEORGIA 2013 Accessibility of food products and food safety Food products for small family-type children’s homes are purchased by the home administrators on the basis of contracts concluded with trade centers and individual groceries. Food products will be purchased only if an electronic waybill can be issued. But this is usually impossible in the regions. Only one shop in the entire local community may be able to issue electronic waybills. Wherever electronic waybills cannot be issued, the only solution is to confine the choice to the food products offered by such shops. This limits accessibility to and diversity of available food products. Further, the children’s homes have no budget for miscellaneous items to spend at their discretion. It turned out that the educators are not quite aware of the legally required information about the food products they are purchasing. Often times the educators do not know what information they should pay attention to when buying food products. They say they buy these products “in a regular way” or “the same way we’d buy them for the household”. At some of the small family-type children’s homes, our monitoring groups detected that the shelf life of some the food products such as chicken and minced meat had been expired. No “best by” dates were shown on meat products, minced meat, chicken drumsticks, frankfurters and fish. In kitchen cupboards, cereals and beans are stored without expiration dates indicated. We also noticed that some leftovers from the previous meals were used to cook the dinner. Water safety Pursuant to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the child must be provided with adequate amount of food and potable water. Under the Childcare Standards, service providers must provide beneficiaries with sufficient amount of safe water 24 hours a day. Persons running the children’s homes do not know whether the water children are consuming is safe. In the regions, the children’s homes get water from wells. Water is collected in reservoirs with special filters installed and are distributed throughout the premises from there. Representatives of children’s homes usually cannot recall the last time these water tanks were cleaned. Some of the children’s homes were not able to provide water safety certificates. At some of these homes our monitoring groups were explained that they were not using the tank water either for drinking or for cooking the meals. The water from the reservoirs is used systematically but no sanitation measures are implemented and the water quality is never checked. This practice endangers the good health of the children’s homes’ beneficiaries. Recommendations: To the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Protection QQ To add food regulatory norms to the Childcare Standards articulating the principles of healthy nutrition of children and adolescents and norms concerning balanced nutrition and food safety; QQ To train the educators in children’s upbringing and development, food safety and balanced nutrition; to train the children and the adolescents in healthy food issues; to elaborate and disseminate relevant guidebooks to children’s homes with due consideration paid to the requirements of the Childcare Standards; QQ To implement measures to make sure that food products are purchased without undue obstacles; QQ To periodically check the water quality. CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH QQ In the course of the monitoring we found out that individuals involved in the upbringing of children under the State care have low knowledge of and qualification in the area of children’s psycho-social development. The State NPM Report 66