Counselling Centre for Children, Adolescents and Parents

The Counselling Centre for Children, Adolescents and Parents is an institution for protection of mental health in children and adolescents, which offers professional help to individuals with psycho-social, learning, developmental and other related problems; contributes, with its professional knowledge and experience, to improvement of psycho-social quality of life in institutions and organizations for children and adolescents and contributes, at the level of a broader community, to improvement of psycho-social conditions of life and development of children and adolescents. The main areas of the Centre’s activities are: out-patient clinical work, mental health promoting and preventive community work, educational work, research and development. This model, that combines different activities of child mental health protection into a holistic and intersectorial (health, education and social welfare) approach linking professional services, volunteers’ activities and non-governmental organizations, has been developed during the past twenty years. In the year 1995 the Counselling Centre for Children, Adolescents and Parents in Ljubljana was designated as WHO Collaborating Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. The main international activity of the WHO Collaborating Center is the elaboration and presentation of the models and experiences of the Counselling Centre. During its 4 years lasting activities it proved to be an efficient catalyst of principles and guidelines of the WHO strategy Health for All. It acted as well as a "child mental health conscience" drawing the public attention and the attention of decision makers on psychosocial adversities threatening the development and mental health of children of risk groups and children in general.