National youth program

7.2. Informing youth
Young people need appropriate level of information about their rights and opportunities, 
and about programs and services offered to them. These are primarily school and out-of-
curriculum activities, special and additional forms of education, non-formal education, 
engagement in certain projects, scholarships, employment and career development, social, 
health and additional insurance, legal protection, financing of housing, voluntary work, 
sport and cultural activities, spirituality, help in crisis situations, mobility, youth tourism and 
other.
Young people are relatively poorly informed about institutions and documents of youth 
policy (e.g. Advisory Board for Youth of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, National 
Youth Action Program), which causes the need to promote institutions and documents of 
the youth policy among the population this policy refers to.
One of the ways in which solving the problem of informing youth may be approached is 
by establishing the so-called info-centers. The existence of info-centers significantly affects 
the level of informing youth and the degree of their social activity. From 2006, such centers 
are being established within the framework of implementation of one of the measures 
from the National Youth Action Program (four regional info-centers: in Zagreb, Rijeka, Split 
and Osijek).
In addition to youth info-centers, publications for youth and about youth are needed. 
There is a ‘‘...certain information vacuum... regarding the publications concerning young 
population’’ (Mendeš, 2006). The Ministry of Family, Veterans’ Affairs and Intergenerational 
Solidarity finances youth publications through annual tenders for projects directed to 
youth; the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport finances the publishing of informative 
publications for youth, particularly those in the process of high school education, and 
especially promotes sport and technical culture, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and 
European Integrations maintains and extends the network of Euro Info points and regularly 
updates the contents of the web page http://europauhrvatskoj.mvpei.hr/, distributes its 
publications, holds winter and summer schools on European integrations, and conducts 
the contests LOGIN@EUROPE and EUQUIZ.
From all mentioned above, it is visible that certain positive developments were achieved 
in informing youth, as well as that there is a need for further development and expansion 
of this activity through the National Youth Program. This particularly relates to young 
persons who dropped out of the school system early, young people who have completed 
education, and therefore have less opportunities to access relevant, interesting and useful 

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information, and young people from rural and poorly developed regions of the Republic of 
Croatia, since the mentioned manners of informing are aimed at and/or accessible mainly 
to urban young population within the education system.
7.3. Youth counselling
There are still no systematic data on the number of counselling centers and bodies that 
established them and also on the number of users of individual counselling centers in the 
Republic of Croatia. The situation is not satisfactory as the empirical data on youth counselling 
centers, their users and areas of work are missing.
In the education system, there is no adequately organized counselling service which would 
be trained for proactive and preventive actions towards students. In every school, on average 
one to two professionals are employed, to whom preventive work and counselling services are 
a part of scope of work. Psychosocial counselling centers for students have been established 
in several cities following the initiative of the local authorities, university employees or non-
governmental organizations. Youth are also forced to make significant efforts to establish 
appropriate contacts and find necessary information in order to exercise their rights and 
opportunities (for example, young people without the possibility for further or additional 
education and career planning).
Organizations and institutions engaged in support in crisis situations have a system of 
counselling centers developed to a certain degree, but it acts curatively, not preventively. 
There is still a lack of satisfactory number of teams for crisis interventions in certain parts of 
the country, although they exist in county centers.
There is a need for opening student counselling centers, arising from the fact that the number 
of students enrolled in universities is by far higher than the number of students who manage 
to complete the studies. The goal of counselling centers is to provide a higher level of life 
quality for young people through workshops with youth about their personal growth and 
development, successful learning, coping with difficulties, development of positive social 
skills, and other development aspects, i.e. individual and group counselling, educative 
workshops, forums, etc. In addition to psychological counselling, professional counselling 
and healthcare counselling must also be provided. There is a need for a systematic work 
with young people and raising public awareness for work with youth in order to encourage 
foundation of youth counselling centers accessible to youth in all regions of the country.
During the previous period, within the Commission for the Prevention of Drug Abuse, in certain 
county centers, counselling centers for young people and their parents were established. In 
2006, the Tempus project DUCAS – Developing University Counselling and Advisory Services 
was launched, with the aim of developing strategic and action plan for establishing counselling 
and advisory services, assessment of student needs, developing programs for orientation and 
support in learning, improving professional staff for psychological counselling and advisory 
work, etc.
In 2007, 45 working positions were opened for professional associates in high schools (social 
pedagogues, psychologists, pedagogues), and the plan for 2008/2009 is to employ another 
50 professional associates for high schools.

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There are no systematically organized youth counselling centers, but a positive step was 
made by establishing family centers which, within their scope of work, provide counselling 
and preventive work and other professional activities related, among other things, to 
upbringing of children, prevention of all kinds of addiction with children and youth, raising 
the quality of life for children, youth and families, organization of learning for children, and 
the development and improvement of non-institutional forms of support to families, children, 
youth and other socially vulnerable population groups. The Ministry of Family, Veterans’ 
Affairs and Intergenerational Solidarity has established seventeen family centers, with the aim 
that in the short-term every county has its family center with branches. Most young people 
come to the existing student counselling centers and youth counselling centers because of 
various difficulties related to learning, followed by problems in social relations and various 
anxiety and depressive conditions, problems of dissatisfaction with themselves and psychical 
consequences which disturb normal functioning. In 2007, over 200 students used the services 
of the psychological counselling center for students at the Faculty of Humanities and Social 
Sciences in Zagreb, similar to the number in 2006. There is the psychological center Tesa – the 
aim of which is to support the socio-emotional development of youth through psychological 
counselling, which at the same time represents a prevention of loneliness, depression, anxiety 
and various forms of unacceptable behaviour.
Teams for crisis situations work in counties and provide support and help after traumatic 
crisis events which include accidents, murders, suicides and other sufferings young persons 
were exposed to. Appointed professionals conduct crisis interventions in case of crisis events 
in the upbringing and education system aimed at mitigating the influence of crisis events, 
accelerating the recovery process of participants in such events and preventing long-term 
unfavourable psychological consequences of a traumatic event. In 2007, 152 professionals 
were officially appointed into Crisis Interventions Teams in counties (82 in education and 70 in 
social care), which means there are 7 professionals on average for each county, although they 
are not evenly distributed over the country (in the upbringing and education system, in 2 
counties there are no appointed professionals, in the social care system, in 8 counties there are 
no appointed professionals, and in many counties there are only several professionals). There 
is a need for systematic education of professionals for crisis interventions, for supervisory 
meetings and for publishing informative and educative leaflets.