JUSTICE FOR ALL The pilot project identified as a promising practice brings social service providers, judges, medical experts and the person with disability work together in assessment of the situation of the concerned persons and in provision of support before, during and after the court proceedings. This is not explicitly provided for in legislation as an obligation but is an available option since 2020 when the Social Services Act was enforced. However, such appropriate social services are not provided in all court regions yet and the judges are not aware of them wherever they are available. According to the interviewed judges and service providers (implementing the project) support services for persons concerned should be referred by the court. The view that the judge can and should refer to social services and/or services providing support, tracking out-patient treatment, and ensuring that no one is arbitrarily deprived of liberty (because of lack of housing) should be vigorously applied in practice. Currently, in judicial circles in Bulgaria, this unpopular understanding is interpreted as over-empowerment and is considered to usurp the role of the social worker. However, the judges must be aware of the CRPD principles and rights of the persons with disability and must collect evidence about the readiness and ability of the social workers and all other experts to apply these principles and standards on the practical level. In case the judge or the prosecutor find there is no proper service in place or/and social workers and/or other experts are not prepared to properly apply the CRPD, the legal framework should allow them to recommend to the relevant authorities building such services or ensure capacity building of the social workers/ other experts. Social service providers and the Social Assistance Departments (which work with people with disabilities) should be involved in compulsory and involuntary treatment proceedings and probation proceedings, because they are competent under the Social Assistance Act and the People with Disabilities Act. This is not a working model yet because the law does not explicitly require the court to refer to them. All alternatives (to detention and compulsory treatment) options should be available to the court for people who are in such a complicated social status to be explored. Some of the interviewed judges already use the opportunity to ask Social Assistance Departments for an assessment of the person’s situation and share that Social Assistance Departments provide poor quality reports and no assistance. Usually the assessment provided by the Social Assistance Department is useless because it only contains information about the person's age, address, pension amount, social security and tax status and nothing about the actual challenges in his/her life situation. However, some social service providers (NGOs) collect and process essential information about the person and gradually start to work on case management successfully with the courts (but still on a pilot project basis). Within the periodic court review of the compulsory treatment (every six months, under Art 432 of the Criminal Procedure Code), the court may direct information and counselling to the social services under the new (2020) Social Services Act, as long as such services have been created. The provider of such a service can make an actual and adequate assessment of the person's needs. There are already some such assessments under the mentioned pilot project, elaborated by the Global Initiative in Psychiatry (NGO). Judges need a connection to a person's support network in order to order release from inpatient compulsory/involuntary treatment. However, finding or building such a network takes months or years in the majority of the cases. The judicial authorities actively must seek for innovative practices based on UNCRPD applications and when done so, to take proactive actions to inform the judges and prosecutors for them. In this regard judges recommend a database with service providers to be set up to enable them to refer accused, defendants and convicted persons with disabilities to them and ask feedback from them about the person’s condition for the purpose of regular court review of the treatment. 121