Good 3.53 is the score for the institutions in the “Report Card 2025” of the National Network for Children (NNC)
Good 3.53 is the score the state received for its care for children and families in the “Scorecard 2025” of the National Network for Children (NNC). For 2024, the state has lowered its score and is beginning to return to the average performance as it has for most of the last 14 editions of the NNC Monitoring Report.
It is noteworthy that for a total of nine domains in the report, scores for 5 of them have declined (‘Child Participation’, ‘Justice for Children’, ‘Early Childhood Development’, ‘Child Health’ and ‘Sport, Culture and Leisure’), with only ‘Child Welfare’, ‘Family Order and Alternative Care’, ‘Child Protection from All Forms of Violence’ and ‘Education’ registering a slight increase in score.
The assessment was released to politicians, senior government officials and the media under the dome of the Largo in the city. Sofia and in the presence of children from the Megaphone Youth Network, who gave speeches and asked questions directly to politicians.
The presentation of the data and recommendations in the “Notebook 2024” was also attended by members of the parliamentary committees on health, education, labour, social and demographic issues, as well as the executive authorities – the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of the Interior, experts from the Sofia Municipality, the SACU, the ACSU, the ASA, the NHIF, etc., who took part in the discussion of state policies for children and families in the country over the pas Data and main conclusions from the report, as well as the assessments in each of the nine monitoring areas were presented by Georgi Bogdanov – Executive Director of the NYS, Georgi Elenkov – Legal Advisor and Director of Policies for Children at the NYS, Bella Damyanova – Coordinator of Policies for Children at the NYS, Dr. Antoaneta Toncheva, expert molecular geneticist, “Community Bridges” Association, one of the faces of the cause of providing as a care by the state of therapeutic food for children and adults with protein-calorie malnutrition – “Children’s Health”; Mrs. Lyuba Yordanova, Senior Specialist “Strategic Partnerships” at the “Together in Class” Foundation, she is responsible for the preparation of the strategic documents of the organization and presents the experience of “Together in Class” to different audiences – ‘Education’; Mrs. Diana Videva, psychologist and member of the board of the “Demetra” Association, professional with over 25 years of experience in the field of education. “Protection of the child from all forms of violence”.
Izabella Traykova, “Dream in the Pocket” Foundation and Plamen Panayotov, “Mission Wings” Foundation from the Youth Network “Megaphone of NMD” posed direct questions to the politicians in the hall. Highlights were presented to the Commission on three of the nine areas of the report: Child Health (average 3.14), Education (good 3.87) and Child Protection from All Forms of Violence (good 3.64).
The expert study is again based on data from over 25 national state and municipal institutions, the analysis and assessments of 40 authors, over 130 organizations and activists from the Network, 7 external evaluators, the nearly 8000 children and adults surveyed, and the institutions that provided us with data under the FOIA and maintained an active dialogue with the team behind the report. For the second year in a row, the Notebook’s rating was above “average” (3.53), which recognizes the many positive trends and practices in the country related to family support. For example, changes to the Civil Registration Act were adopted, which ensured that over 120,000 Bulgarian citizens aged 14 and over obtained identity documents; the National Health Strategy 2030 became a reality; the 15 days absence with a note from a parent was adopted; and key operations for social, educational and health support to vulnerable families under the European Child Guarantee Plan were implemented. All of this is detailed and evaluated in this report. The hundreds of recommendations in this year’s Notebook make it clear: policies for children are not a lottery. They are a structural component of the rule of law and require consistency, data analysis, and responsible government decisions.
Throughout 2024, the state often chose the sensational over the essential. Until the 50th National Assembly amended the UPEA to solve the non-existent problem of propaganda of “non-traditional sexual orientation” in the Bulgarian classroom, the serious problems of the education system remained unaddressed, such as the lack of a quality management standard; too early profiling; huge regional disparities and secondary segregation of school communities; the fact that at least 1/3 of children with disabilities in Bulgaria do not attend school. While civil activists from the Public Council for the National Children’s Hospital were summoned to explain to the SANS – on complaints given by a commercial company – the reform of child and maternal healthcare did not take place again. The continued lack of authentic child participation mechanisms in 2024 is also worrying. For this edition of the Notebook, the National Network for Children surveyed 3,141 children and 4,617 adults from across Bulgaria. But how many children and parents did the institutions and lawmakers consult on key reforms in education, child health, access to services, housing, protection from violence, justice, sport, culture? “The 2025 Notebook is not a verdict. In 14 years, this unique monitoring report has established itself as a basis for in-depth, informed and constructive dialogue between civil society and the state, and as a catalyst for many significant changes.
The grades in the “Report Card” are written on the principle of those in school – from a weak 2 when the state has not taken any action to address the problems in the areas of the report, to an excellent 6 when measures have been introduced with proven effectiveness. The annual report assesses the progress of state institutions in caring for children in 9 areas – Welfare, Family Environment and Alternative Care, Protection from All Forms of Violence, Justice, Early Childhood Development, Education, Health, Sport, Culture and Leisure and Child Participation. Here are the highlights from each area.
What do the scores tell us in “Report Card 2025- What is the state’s average success in caring for children?”
CHILD PARTICIPATION
Score on this topic: 3.11
In 2024, ensuring the authentic and meaningful participation of children and young people from diverse communities remained a challenge. Despite the presence of more forums organized by the civil sector, in conjunction with or for children, there was a bottleneck at the institutional and societal level related to understanding and specially creating spaces for voices to come together on issues and concerns that impact children’s lives. There continued to be a lack of access to age-appropriate public information on laws and policies that affect children. The only progress was made with the children’s version of the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 26, adapted by UNICEF Bulgaria, on children’s rights, the environment and climate change. The state and municipalities do not use digital tools to consult children. In the opinion of children, the authorities are not sufficiently interested in their civic position, although the involvement of politicians and their conversations with children on issues important to them in forums organized by civil society organizations is reported as positive. Pilot initiatives to educate children on human rights and civic activism have remained limited in scope, resources and benefits. They have continued to be implemented as part of non-formal civic education programs, but are either absent or poorly covered in the curriculum.
CHILD WELFARE
Subject score: 3.81
In 2023 (data for 2024 not yet available), 57,478 children were born in Bulgaria, of whom 57,197 (99.5%) were live births. According to Eurostat, the country is the EU record holder for birth rates in 2023. 33.9% of children are at risk of poverty and social exclusion.
This proportion is almost twice as high as the eight European countries with the lowest proportion of children in this group. In terms of risk of poverty alone, 26.9% of children in fall into this group. The proportion is more than twice as high as the six European countries with the lowest proportion of children in this group. A focus on reducing poverty and supporting children and families is set out in the National Strategy for Poverty Reduction and Promotion of Social Inclusion 2030. An active labour market policy is the measure under Article 36 of the NPA, supporting unemployed persons from disadvantaged groups. In 2024, the amounts of some family allowances for children under the Child Support Act were increased, which is reported as a positive line of work. And in 2024, a National Housing Strategy and legislative framework were not adopted to set targets for adequate social housing and to address illegal housing in neighborhoods with the worst economic, social and environmental characteristics. Once again, the country remains without a National Strategy for the Child. In 2024, the National Child Protection Strategy will be adopted. The National Council for Child Protection adopted the Draft Strategy and the process was not finalized. Without this document, consistency in monitoring, evaluation and improvement of policies to support children and families could not be ensured.
FAMILY ENVIRONMENT AND ALTERNATIVE CARE
Subject Score: 3.76
Despite the formal adoption of the National Social Services Map in 2024, there continued to be a lack of financial standards for social services and no regulation of social worker caseloads. The Map lacked an analysis based on qualitative indicators of needs in a given municipality, which naturally leads to a distorted picture of needs in different regions of the country. And in 2024, the services targeted at parents of children with disabilities did not match the actual need, especially when it came to places remote from big cities. There was no clear horizon to outline the finalization of the de-institutionalization process, and the country was left with three uncovered day-care centers. Changes were adopted in the Ordinance on the conditions and procedure for application, selection and approval of foster families and placement of children in them, but despite this foster care remained at a crossroads between the possibility of regulatory improvements and the risk of continued institutional inertia. The service continued to be delivered without financial standards – on a project basis, lacking consistent support for foster carers and raising their public profile through government campaigns. With regard to adoption, the Ordinance on the Procedure for the Registration, Keeping, Preservation, Maintenance and Operation of the NEIS for Full Adoption was promulgated.
The amendments to the CC also affected the increase of the time limit for post-adoption monitoring and easier access of adoptive parents and adopted children to social services. Despite these changes, monitoring continued to be formal, without real support and sensitivity to individual trauma of children and adoptive parents. The lack of an active and practically functioning Coordination Mechanism for unaccompanied children continued and the number of these children in social services remained extremely low.
CHILD PROTECTION FROM ALL FORMS OF VIOLENCE
Score on this topic: 3.64
In 2024, a number of steps were taken in the protection from violence – changes in the Child Protection Act, where the range of persons against whom charges can be brought in cases of child abuse was expanded; the possibility not to interrupt parent-child contact during an imposed protection measure. A draft Coordination Mechanism for Assistance and Support to Victims of Domestic Violence was also published, but not validated. Actions have been taken to set up a plan for prevention and protection from domestic violence, but there is currently a delay. More protection orders have been issued under the Domestic Violence Act and there has been an increase in the number of pre-trial proceedings for crimes committed in the context of domestic violence. The NP for prevention and protection from domestic violence for the period 2024 – 2026 was adopted late and this did not allow to use the 450 000 BGN from the budget for prevention and protection projects. In terms of supporting children at school, there remains a need to implement tracking and analysis of measures and effects of counteracting school bullying and to work towards its recognition. The lack of government funding for the Safer Internet Centre remains a serious problem, especially given the huge number of reports. It is urgent to update legislation concerning regulations related to new risks for children online. Synchronization between all the institutions responsible for road safety is needed, as well as effective programs and measures to protect the lives and health of children in road traffic.
JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN
Score on this topic: 3,44
In 2024, amid the political crisis, the state did not take significant steps in reforming the juvenile justice system. This accounts for this year’s lower score in the Justice for Children section. The practice shows too many cases of ignorance and non-compliance of judicial-investigative actions with children in contact/conflict with the law and disregard for the procedural rights and best interests of children. Again, this year, efforts to comprehensively reform the juvenile delinquency system and to ensure better prevention of child criminalization were absent. There remains a need for more services to prevent the escalation of parental conflicts, for the normalization of an effective legal means of enforcing the regime of personal relations and for increased use of the mediation procedure in family disputes.
EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT
Subject rating: 3,21
Despite the existence of initial steps towards developing sustainable policies to reform the ECEC system (the 2024 Annual Plan to Promote Early Childhood Development by Ensuring Access to Social, Educational, Health, and Integrated Services to Reduce Negative Trends in Child Poverty and Enhance the Quality of Life of Young Children), systemic problems persist in practice, such as: lack of real access to services, lack of implementation of modern concepts for working with children, and lack of and The coverage of children in kindergartens is 87.9% for 2023/24 and in nurseries and nursery 12 groups is 17.9% (compared to an EU average of 93% for the over-3 age group and 38% for the under-3 age group). The approach to the very young continues to be in the concepts of objectifying them through the medical model, at the expense of subjectivizing them through an individual approach, play and building social-emotional skills.
CHILD HEALTH
Rating on the topic: 3,14
The district’s rating is consistently one of the lowest in the Notebook. The further decline is mainly due to the unstable political situation and insufficient progress in health areas with a clear deficit over the years. These include the shortage of health care in remote and isolated areas; the still unadopted medical standard in child psychiatry; the lack of analysis of the causes of maternal and child mortality and the high regional disparities in these statistics; and opaque procedures for approving treatment and therapies for children abroad; Lack of adequate regulations for the provision and reimbursement of medical food for patients with malnutrition; Failure to recognize and systematically address addictions such as gambling, screen and game addiction; Lack of evaluation of the effectiveness of measures to reduce smoking and substance use. The main advocacy priority of it remained the construction of the National Children’s Hospital, for which it is crucial to follow a transparent plan and to have a supply of health professionals. Patronage care remained in 2024 as a good wish for the institutions, without real progress on funding, building a plan to conduct it in wide and systematic implementation so that it reaches those in direct need.
EDUCATION
Subject score: 3,87
The issue was marked by an amendment to the UDPS Act that prohibited the carrying out of “propaganda, promotion or incitement in any manner of ideas and views related to non-traditional sexual orientation and/or the determination of gender identity other than biological.” This unexpected ban has not only presented major challenges for children with different sexual orientations, but has also abolished any mention of the topic in school, including in the scarce health education classes. Against this backdrop, real problems in education such as the lack of quality standards, the large scissors between urban and rural areas in access to education and dropout prevention, the lack of support for the inclusion of all children in school, and sustainable mechanisms for the prevention of aggression among students have remained unaddressed. And in 2024, no separate health and reproductive education classes were introduced. The state did not prioritize effective measures to incorporate interdisciplinary topics such as digital literacy and social-emotional learning into the curriculum, and progress in these areas was piecemeal, based on the availability of additional project funding and the introduction of good practices in schools by civil society organizations. At a time of increasing misinformation, a wave of propaganda and fake news, media content and training to deal with it was almost completely absent from the curriculum. The district’s scores are up again from last year due to continued efforts in inclusive education for children with SEN and steps taken to improve the selection and support process for school principals.
SPORT, CULTURE AND LEISURE
Subject Score: 3.80
Inadequate knowledge, skills and attitudes towards healthy lifestyles among adolescents in the 10-19 age group were also reported as a problem in 2024. The Together in Arts and Sport NP has seen an increase in pupil coverage for the third year running, and more museums now have a children’s corner and special activities aimed at children. However, access to culture has remained an elite pursuit, mainly due to fragmented initiatives and lack of coordination between institutions to promote inclusion of marginalized groups. The number of outdoor, publicly accessible and free playgrounds for sport and physical activity has increased, leaving the problem of conservation. There also remained a need to analyses socio-economic barriers, including regional inequalities and financial constraints, to access to physical activity, sport and culture.
