A/HRC/43/40/Add.1 by social workers regarding their overall understanding of the rights, needs and protection risks of child victims, and about a general shortage of social workers specialized in child protection. Social workers are perceived as administrators of cases rather than case managers. The general education requirement for social workers is high-school level – although most hold university degrees unrelated to social work – and the majority have an average of more than three years’ experience. High staff turnover and low salaries are of concern. There is a continuing need for training for professionals dealing with cases of violence and sexual exploitation of children. There are also concerns regarding the lack of methodology to assess the workload and performance of social workers and the lack of properly functioning information management systems for child protection cases. Although there is legislation that requires background checks for anyone working with minors and obliges organizations to follow a code of conduct for professionals working with children, there is a need to ensure that these provisions are implemented and monitored systematically, especially in residential care institutions. 65. Regarding preventive programmes and services, civil society organizations have conducted various initiatives on prevention and reaction and on the development and provision of innovative social services that are better than those provided by municipalities. For example, the regional programme on prevention of sexual abuse and exploitation of the Social Activities and Practice Institute provides a comprehensive approach for tackling child sexual exploitation. Activities include building resilience for young children on sexual abuse and conducting educational meetings with parents; explaining the risks of sexual exploitation online and offline, their consequences, and methods used by perpetrators; providing information on resources to run preventive activities with adolescents; and conducting public awareness campaigns. The Animus Association Foundation runs projects including one that ended in 2019 entitled “Support and concern for boys surviving sexual violence”, and one aimed at protecting children through new information technology, in particular children separated from their parents and growing up in institutions in Bulgaria and Romania. The Vselena Centre for Victims of Sexual Violence provides multidisciplinary care for victims of sexual violence and training for professionals on the prevention and identification of violence.28 66. Regarding efforts to prevent online child sexual abuse, the cybercrime unit has a group dealing with online sexual exploitation of children. The group is a member of the working group on child sexual exploitation under the European Multidisciplinary Platform against Criminal Threats of the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol); that working group is responsible for creating annual strategic plans and links to the International Child Sexual Exploitation image database of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) with a functional victim identification feature. The cybercrimes unit also has filtering software for sites containing child sexual exploitation material and cooperates with seven major Internet providers that are connected to the specialized software. The unit has also embarked on an awareness-raising campaign and Internet safety modules on topics such as cyberbullying and online grooming. Despite various such awareness-raising campaigns, peer-to-peer education and measures undertaken to enhance digital literacy, the Special Rapporteur notes that these materials and tools do not reach vulnerable children outside of the educational setting. 67. Despite various measures to address the reproductive health of adolescents through its national programme for sexual and reproductive health (2013–2017) and the recent efforts of NGOs to advocate comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education in primary and secondary schools and among vulnerable communities, efforts have been circumvented and criticized by far-right movements. Such efforts are denounced as attempts to strip parents of their rights over children and are feared as risking the early sexual liberation of children. As also observed by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, the campaign against the ratification of the Istanbul Convention led to the creation of an “anti-gender movement” that resulted in attacks on women and on all those providing services to victims of violence. 28 See http://demetra-bg.org/center-universe (in Bulgarian only). 15