President of charity blasts child protection decision

The president of the Smile of the Child nonprofit child welfare organization, Costas Yiannopoulos, has launched a scathing attack against Deputy Labor and Social Affairs Minister Domna Michailidou over a ministerial decision last week setting the operating conditions for child protection structures, making the prospect of deinstitutionalization in Greece more visible.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Yiannopoulos said the same rules are not being applied to state and church-run institutions and strongly argued that the implementation of the ministerial decision would lead to the shutdown of 14 homes and day care centers, and possibly his own imprisonment.

“Now someone must come through the door and arrest me because the day care centers are not licensed,” he said. Michailaidou said last week that by establishing rules for child protection shelters, “we are moving away from the outdated model of child protection within shelters to a child-centered model of finding the right family for them.”