Protection Reporting
Violence, abuse, harassment, inappropriate behaviour, sexual integrity offences, worrying situations and risks concerning a child or a vulnerable person.
Service
Reporting & Alert Channel
"A report is only useful if it can be received, analysed, handled and traced."
Veritas in Simplice creates, sets up and manages, externally and independently, a professional arrangement for collecting and handling reports.
Two distinct dimensions
Protection Reporting and Alert & Compliance.
Alert & Compliance
Internal whistleblowing arrangements covering breaches of the organisation's own rules, of applicable sport-ethics codes and of legal obligations — organised contractually to give the reporting person genuine protection alongside the statutory framework.
A channel deliberately widened to any situation concerning a child
Beyond the strict legal framework, our prevention and protection model encourages voluntarily widening the reporting channel to any type of situation concerning a child: discomfort, fear, unusual behaviour, a recurring rumour, a shared image, a conflict, an adult's attitude or a safety condition. The child, those around them, or any person in contact with them, should be able to report what concerns them without waiting for the event to meet a precise legal threshold.
Legal framework
In Bulgaria, reporting rests on a broad right to notify and a targeted duty to report.
The Child Protection Act (Закон за закрила на детето) and the Criminal Code (Наказателен кодекс) together set out two distinct regimes. Any organisation that welcomes children must know which one applies to each member of staff — and must have an arrangement capable of handling both.
Child Protection Act, right to notify
Right to notify the authorities
Any person may notify the Child Protection Department at the local Directorate of Social Assistance, or the State Agency for Child Protection, when a child's physical, psychological or sexual integrity appears to be at risk. Persons bound by professional secrecy may also notify once released from that duty, or where the law so provides.
Child Protection Act, art. on mandatory reporting
Duty to notify the authorities
Persons who, in the exercise of an official or professional function, are in regular contact with children — notably teaching staff, medical staff and social workers — are required to notify the Child Protection Department or the national child helpline 116 111 whenever concrete indications suggest that a child's integrity is at risk and they cannot remedy the situation themselves.
Coordination Mechanism for cases of violence against children
Inter-institutional cooperation
The Coordination Mechanism, adopted under the Pre-school and School Education Act framework, brings together schools, social services, police and health services to establish the facts jointly. This is what makes the organisation's own dated, documented record indispensable.
Child Protection Act, protective measures
Child-protection measures
The Social Assistance Agency, through its Child Protection Departments, has a graduated range of measures available: guidance to parents, supervision, placement outside the family, placement in specialised institutions. The organisation orders nothing itself, but it triggers and documents the process.
Notifying the Child Protection Department does not replace a criminal complaint
Offences against the sexual integrity of minors, abuse of a position of dependency and violation of the duty of care or education under the Criminal Code (Наказателен кодекс) are prosecuted ex officio. A management team facing concrete suspicions must know in advance who decides, within what timeframe and on what criteria, on a report to the criminal authorities.
A matter of governance, not merely of organisation
The existence of a designated officer is not the decisive element. What matters is the institution's ability to prove that it has a concrete, documented and operational arrangement for collecting and handling reports — and that the sensitive data collected in this way is processed in accordance with the Personal Data Protection Act and the GDPR.
The arrangement is not limited to schools
It is adapted to every institution that welcomes children or vulnerable people: sports clubs and federations subject to the Physical Education and Sport Act and applicable ethics codes, camps and holiday colonies, associations, foundations, religious institutions and social and medical facilities.
External management
An independent third party, guaranteeing impartiality.
Entrusting the channel to an external operator protects both the person making the report and the organisation: intake is independent of the internal hierarchy, analysis is impartial, and every step is time-stamped and documented. Management retains control over decisions, with full visibility over how each case is handled.
Handling
From intake to follow-up.
- 01
Intake
Collection of the report through a secure channel, accessible at all times, in the language of the person concerned.
- 02
Analysis
Qualification of the facts and assessment of the degree of urgency and severity.
- 03
Referral
Transmission to the competent persons and, where appropriate, to the Child Protection Departments, the State Agency for Child Protection or the criminal authorities.
- 04
Traceability
Documentation of every step, of deadlines and of decisions taken.
- 05
Feedback
Informing the person who made the report while respecting confidentiality.
- 06
Follow-up
Periodic review and lessons learned to strengthen prevention.
Put in place a robust reporting channel.
We design the arrangement, draft the procedures and manage them externally.