LINKS: Multidisciplinary Assessment and Determination of Procedural Accommodations for Child Victims with Intellectual or Psychosocial Disabilities

Implementation period
February 2025 – August 2025

Donor
FIRAH – International Foundation of Applied Disability Research

About the project

This project builds upon and purports to extend the ongoing action called “Linking Information for Adaptive and Accessible Child-Friendly Courts (LINK)” – 101097047, co-funded by the European Union’s Citizen, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (2021-2027). It seeks to promote accessibility in criminal proceedings to enable child victims with intellectual or psychosocial disability, including users of alternative and augmentative communication (AAC), to participate in line with their will and preference effectively. Its purpose is to increase knowledge on how to identify and adopt procedural accommodations for child victims of crime with disabilities.

These aims will be achieved by impelemting the following activities:

The consortium will conduct desk research in 8 EU countries at the national level based on primary sources (national and international criminal and human rights law and case-law) and secondary sources (relevant literature providing commentary on primary sources); Children, child protection and criminal justice professionals will be consulted at national level to share their views on existing practices, what barriers exist, how they should be overcome, what (digital or AI) tools may be beneficial to overcome these barriers, recording any recommendations or promising practices.
All research will be compiled at the EU level into one International Synthesis Report.
The consortium will create implementation support tools for professionals in criminal justice and child rights protection. This includes Blueprints for both Model and National Multidisciplinary Cooperation Systems. These documents will serve as practical guides, offering concrete recommendations and action plans for optimizing cooperation, information sharing, and judicial decisions regarding participatory measures (such as protection and procedural accommodations) for child victims, both with and without intellectual and psychosocial disabilities, in criminal proceedings.
Project deliverables will be presented to academics, legal professionals, experts, and activists during the International Conference, which will feature an Expert Panel. These platforms will be utilized to gather feedback and improve the outputs, thereby enhancing their quality and applicability in practice.

Project implementing partners:
Validity Foundation (Hungary), France Victimes 58 (ANDAVI) (France), Portuguese Association for Victim Support (Portugal), National Research Council (Italy), Fenacerci (Portugal), Kera Foundation (Bulgaria), PIC – Legal Center for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (Slovenia), Sabine Lobnig Consulting & Translations (Austria), Spolecnost pro podporu lidi s mentalnim postizenim v Ceske republice (Czech Republic), TERRE DES HOMMES FOUNDATION LAUSANNE IN HUNGARY (Hungary), Victims Support Europe (Belgium).

Project budget: 75 000.00 EUR
Our part in the budget:  5667.68 EUR

Reference number: APa2024_058