The most important areas for adults are “Education” and “Children’s Health,” and for children, “Sport, Culture and Leisure.” All put “Child Protection” and “Welfare” as the third and fourth most important, respectively.
More than 7,700 children, adults, and young people up to 18 years old took part in the surveys to assess the work done by the state in policies for families and children in Bulgaria in 2024. Their assessments in the nine areas will feed into the monitoring report “Scorecard 2025 – What is the average success of the state in caring for children?”, which we will soon present to policymakers.
The number of children, professionals, and parents completing the questionnaires has increased every year, with this year’s figure almost triple that of last year. Over 4,600 adults and over 3,100 children participated in this year’s evaluation of state policies for children and families. Due to increased interest, we left the surveys open for a longer period again this year.
The questionnaires were distributed by dozens of media outlets and through the Megafon contact network, which helped us distribute them to young people in the country and schools. The National Network of Children is very grateful to the Ministry of Education and Science for its assistance in distributing the surveys to schools and principals with an invitation to give publicity to the survey among students and parents. We are also grateful to the BNR Program – Horizon, to the program “Horizon by Noon” and to the journalist Valeria Nikolova for the opportunity every week to experts, collaborators, and authors in the Report Card 2025 to introduce listeners to the most important topics and issues in the field of children and youth policies in our country.
The estimates in the Notebook 2025 will be made public at the official launch of the report. The most important themes for adults in the past year were “Education”, “Child Protection from All Forms of Violence” “Well-being”, and for children “Sport, Culture, and Leisure”. The second most important theme for both groups for 2024 is “Child Protection”. Respondents in both groups ranked “Welfare” third, focusing on problems related to low incomes, the disinterest of the state administration in problems related to children and their parents, and insufficient awareness followed by ineffective response of the responsible authorities in the protection and prevention of violence. It is clear from the responses that there is still little awareness in our society of the rights of child victims or perpetrators.
More than 40% of the respondents were adults aged 40 to 50 years and 21% were aged 50 years and above, with 81% of respondents being female. Over 40% were from a large settlement, 36% were from a small settlement and 23% were from Sofia. Among children and youth, 19% were between the ages of 14-16, 19% were between the ages of 17-18, and 16% were under the age of 14. 36% of them are from big cities 37% are from small settlements and 27% of children are from Sofia.
Highlights of adults and children in individual districts:
Child Welfare
More than half of the respondents think that there is very little effort on the part of the state to support and the opinion is that the state does not effectively support parents and children. There is a clear lack of adequate policies in this regard.
Child protection from all forms of violence
More than 53% of children do not feel safe and find it difficult to know where to turn to in times of need. They are not clear about how the state will help them and what they need to do to get effective help. Adults feel that the state does not have adequate measures against child abuse. More than 56% of all respondents are not aware of their rights and in general, issues related to child protection.
Child Health
The results clearly show that, once again, the state apparatus is failing to tackle this problem. Child health is neglected and not a priority. Most children live in poverty and cannot afford good health care.
Children’s health in this country is not effective enough and at the same time difficult to access for people living in poverty.
Early childhood development
More than 52% of adults think that government policies related to early childhood development are ineffective and have no real application. For example, many mothers and their children do not receive adequate health care. Care for infants and young children by the state is extremely inadequate. Social assistance is woefully inadequate and inappropriate to rising inflation.
Education
More than 77% of the adults and young people surveyed think that the state does not take enough care and effort for the development of education in Bulgaria. Our education system is outdated and dysfunctional, filled with inadequate strategies and tactics relative to the present.
According to 80% of adolescents, schools need to hear children’s voices more often and organize more initiatives to stimulate children’s participation and performances.
Adults think that civic education needs to be developed more in schools. The opinion of the respondents is that a large number of children drop out of the education system due to lack of financial resources.
Family environment and alternative care
Over 68% of youth and adults surveyed think that most children living in poverty cannot afford leisure activities.
The results clearly show that families are not sufficiently cared for by the state, indicating inadequate support for them.
Justice
More than 79% of the respondents were not aware of the problems in the field of “Child Justice”. More than 40% of them feel that they are not getting adequate care and help to cope with their experiences. More than 49% believe that on the part of the state apparatus, programs and support for children who are victims of violence or have problems with the law are weak, reaching fewer or no children. A large proportion of respondents are not aware of what to do in such situations.
Sport, culture, and leisure
More than 69% of the young people surveyed think that the state does not take enough care of sports, with not a few sports facilities in poor condition. Once again sport is not a priority for Bulgaria. Unfortunately, many of them do not have access to their favorite sports activities due to a lack of sports infrastructure and/or funds.
Children and youth participation
More than 40% of children think their opinions should be sought and respected. They think that more activities related to children’s participation and performances should be developed.
The opinion of the respondents in this area is that more time and attention should be given to children by the state apparatus and that they should be involved more often in initiatives related to their growth as individuals to improve and practice their skills.
Among the recommendations for open-ended questions, the following answers and recommendations are very common:
The state should devote more attention and resources to children and their parents.
In a school environment, more attention should be paid to children’s opinions.
There needs to be more initiatives related to children’s participation in which they can express themselves more.
Adults think that civic education in schools should be strengthened more.
Children and their parents should be made a priority for government bodies to start investing more in their health and well-being.
The communication awareness of the state apparatus should be improved so that children and adults are more aware of the support related to violence and need more information on how to protect themselves.
Support measures for child victims of violence and perpetrators of crime to become more effective for support and prevention.
More work is needed from the state apparatus related to the economy of Bulgaria, as more and more children are unable to get treatment and go to school due to financial problems.
The recommendations of the general public continue to largely reflect the many advocacy lines of the National Network for Children, which will be reflected in the monitoring report.
Every year, the “Report Card 2025″ will again make an expert analysis of the work done in the last year in children’s policies and will answer the questions – where were steps forward achieved, and which areas are stagnating or deteriorating? In its assessment, the National Network for Children will again refer to a wealth of data collected by the responsible ministries, the opinion of experts in the different areas of the report, as well as the independent assessment of external evaluators. The averaged scores of 2 to 6 from the surveys will be added to the final assessment, thus also reflecting the views of the general public.
This publication is produced in the framework of the Democracy with Children’s Rights initiative, funded by the European Union and the Open Society Institute – Sofia (OSI) or the Workshop for Civic Initiatives (WCI) Foundation. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EECEA) or the IOSS (or FRGI). Neither the European Union, nor the EACEA, nor the EARI (or the CIFF) can be held responsible for them.”.
