1. The rates of fees of kindergarten places in Keila town and Saue rural municipality Case No 6-4/121345 Case No 6-4/130349; 7-8/130559 During the reporting year, on two occasions the Chancellor verified the lawfulness of the rate of fee paid by a parent for a place in a pre-school child care institution. Both cases concerned a situation where the local authority, so to speak, bought additional kindergarten places from a private kindergarten / another local authority under a contract in order to comply with the Pre-School Child Care Institutions Act. In comparison with the fees in municipal kindergartens operated by Keila town and Saue rural municipality, parents had to pay more for the additional places bought by the local authorities. In both cases, a question of the legal nature of the contract concluded between the local authority and the service provider arose. Performance of an administrative function may be delegated to another person by an administrative act/administrative contract or a contract under civil law. The conclusion of an administrative contract requires a relevant delegating norm in an Act, but the Pre-School Child Care Institutions Act does not contain such a delegating provision. Therefore, it is not possible to adopt an administrative act or conclude an administrative contract for ensuring the availability of a pre-school child care institution service via another person. Such a contract would be unlawful. PART II The following part contains an overview of the selected proceedings in 2013. PART III The state’s intervention in the custody and visiting rights of the parents would be more effective if in each proceeding concerning children the factors affecting the welfare of the particular child and the impact of possible solutions on the child’s welfare are established, as well as the child’s own opinion if the child’s level of development enables to express it. PART IV In the opinion of the Chancellor, to protect the interests of children in case of legal separation of the parents the parents should be offered significantly more opportunities for using family counselling and conciliation services. In doing this, it is important that the services are made available everywhere in Estonia and are affordable for parents. PART I CANCELLOR OF JUSTICE AS OMBUDSMAN FOR CHILDREN Delegating the performance of an administrative function under a civil law contract does not require the existence of a delegating norm in an Act, but the preconditions for concluding a civil law contract established under the Administrative Cooperation Act must be complied with. Inter alia, a contract for delegating the performance of an administrative function may not regulate the rights or duties of the recipient of a public service (child/parent) and by delegating the performance of the service the local authority is not relieved of the duty imposed on it under the Act. Both Keila town and Saue rural municipality breached the conditions for the admissibility of concluding the above civil law contract. In case of Keila town, the amount of the fee paid by the parents of children attending a private kindergarten arose from the contract concluded between Keila town and the operator of the private kindergarten. Hence, the contract regulated the rights and duties of the recipient (child/ parent) of the public service. Therefore, the Chancellor reached the opinion that in this regard the contract had been concluded in breach of the law and was void. The Chancellor noted that Keila rural municipality had adopted a regulation on fees for kindergarten places and therefore this regulation also had to be used to calculate the service fee paid by the parents whose 45