II. PROCEEDINGS In 2014, the Chancellor opened 134 cases concerning the rights of children. Of these, 62 were substantive proceedings and 72 proceedings concerned matters outside the competence of the Chancellor. In those cases, the Chancellor explained to the petitioners the Chancellor’s competence and advised them how to best protect their rights. Children themselves contacted the Chancellor for the protection of their rights on seven occasions during the reporting year. In the remaining cases the Chancellor was contacted by parents or other legal representatives of a child. Advisers at the Children’s Rights Department of the Chancellor’s Office also provided explanations about the rights of the child by telephone. During the reporting year, the Chancellor opened 15 cases to verify the constitutionality of legislation concerning children. Of these, two cases were opened on the Chancellor’s own initiative and 13 on the basis of a petition. During the reporting year, the Riigikogu adopted the new Child Protection Act which enters into force on 1 January 2016. This is a framework Act regulating the organisation of the system of child protection in Estonia, and therefore the Chancellor kept a close eye on the proceedings of the Act. The Chancellor also expressed an opinion on the Draft Act from the point of view of the rights of the child during its proceedings and also analysed the constitutionality of some of the provisions of the adopted Act based on petitions. These cases are described in more detail below. To verify the lawfulness of activities of persons and agencies exercising public authority, the Chancellor initiated 37 proceedings, of these 11 on his own initiative and 26 based on a petition. In addition, during the reporting year the Chancellor expressed an opinion on 4 pieces of draft legislation concerning children and submitted his recommendations to the drafters. Similarly to the previous reporting year, the Chancellor received several petitions concerning the issues of the right of custody and visiting rights in respect of children. The petitioners mostly complained about the activities of child protection workers of rural municipality or city authorities in the process of separating a child from the family, in organising the life of the child after separation and in restricting communication between the child and the parents. The continuing large number of petitions and telephone calls concerning the right of custody and visiting rights in respect of children is an indication of ongoing topicality of problems in organising the life of children after separation from the family. During the reporting year, the Chancellor established on several occasions that local government child protection officials had violated the rights of the child and of the parents. There had been cases where the local government officials had separated a child from the family based on wrong considerations or restricted the visiting rights of the parent without the court’s approval. On several occasions, violation of the visiting rights occurred in situations where a parent was in a custodial institution. In those cases, local government officials had failed to establish whether and under which conditions it would be in the interests of the child to communicate with the parent in the custodial institution and, instead of having recourse to the court for restricting the visiting rights, the officials had restricted the visiting rights merely because the parent was in a custodial institution. 48