As part of its Child in Danger Diagnostics project OPS Sirius aims to create a diagnostic procedure to assess whether a child is in danger in its social environment, to test it and implement it as an effective instrument in everyday work where acute diagnostics is needed.

The reason for this project was the opinion given by specialists on child problems, according to which there is not yet a comprehensive and modern tool in the Czech Republic for the assessment of the situation of children in danger which would allow for qualified decisions to be made in respect of further steps to be taken upon the handling of their situation. This opinion was also backed up by the results of monitoring of children endangered by their social environment initiated by the Sirius Foundation in 2008.

The importance of the correct diagnostics for a child that is in danger and its family is primarily in harmonising the assessment of the family, preventing the child from being taken away from its family, uncovering the risk of CAN syndrome in time and selecting a remedial programme.

The aim of the project is:

• To introduce a comprehensive procedure for assessing a child’s situation - standardisation.
• Prevention of a direct threat to the child - timely detection of the family’s potential for violence towards the child.
• To define the outset for the introduction of an individual plan for the solution of the child’s situation.
• To guarantee expertise in assessing the situation.
• To prevent children from being taken away from their families, thus reducing the number of children placed outside their biological families.
• To support the solution of the child’s situation by extrajudicial means in an attempt to stabilise the family and reduce the number of family cases decided by court.
• To construct a means of diagnosis which would quickly, effectively and reliably provide a picture about each child’s situation.
• To set the norm and deviations from the norm, the risks and deficiencies in child care and the deficiencies in each child’s situation.
• To test the proposed means of diagnosis so that it is representative for the population of the Czech Republic.
• To submit the results that are obtained to statistical analysis.
• To create a method and the assessment of how a family functions in relation to a child.

The patron of the project is Prof. PhDr. Lenka Šulová, CSc., the head of the social psychology department at the Department of Psychology, the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. Two working seminars were held with the participation of professionals who openly discussed matters relating to the diagnosis of a child that is in danger. Their opinions provided an important frame for the means of diagnosis. Finalisation of the project is planned for 2012.