A draft amendment to Estonia's Child Protection Act notes that local child protection services are responsible for a wide range of tasks and face heavy workloads, which has led to high staff turnover and a risk of burnout. The proposed changes aim to free up child protection workers' time so they can focus on children with complex needs who require long-term support, explained Anne Haller, an adviser in the Ministry of Social Affairs' children and families department.

"These changes are aimed at making the child protection system more flexible and reasonable, so that support for a child doesn't always have to come from a child protection worker, but rather depends on the type of help the child needs," Haller said.

According to Haller, the amendment does not impose any new responsibilities on professionals in other fields but introduces more flexibility into the system so children can get help from specialists they already have a relationship with.

"A child protection worker will always be someone a child or family can turn to if they can't get help elsewhere, but right now the system expects child protection to be the first responder and that's not always in the child's best interest," Haller said.

She gave the example of a common situation where a problem arises at school. Under the current law, depending on the nature of the issue, the school is required to notify child protection. The aim of this is to ensure that no sector sees the child only through its own narrow lens and that child protection can piece together a full picture of the child's situation. However, when child protection workers assess a case and determine that the problem is solely within the education system, they currently have very limited options for referring the case back to the school.

The law assumes that child protection must take over case coordination, which increases the workload not only for child protection workers but also for school-based support staff. These school specialists are then required to coordinate all their actions with child protection, attend regular roundtables and comply with the requirements of a formal case plan.

"If the problem clearly falls within the school's competence, it would be faster, more competent and more supportive for the child to resolve it within the school's own system," Haller said. In such cases, it would be sufficient to notify child protection without requiring them to take over the case. "Creating this kind of flexibility would allow for a more reasonable distribution of work among professionals who work with children and avoid unnecessary obligations. We're not adding new duties — we're creating opportunities that allow them to work more effectively and flexibly," she said.

Anneli Valner, cooperation coordinator at the Estonian Union for Child Welfare, confirmed that the heavy workload, burnout and high turnover among child protection workers are real concerns. She emphasized that trust-based relationships are key to helping children and families and that frequent staff changes make it difficult to build those relationships.

One of the other groups of professionals who work with children are school psychologists, who have been in short supply for years. Karmen Maikalu, head of the Estonian School Psychologists' Association, said that while she understands the challenges faced by child protection workers, school psychologists themselves are also stretched thin.

"Child protection workers are indeed overburdened, but school psychologists are definitely not underworked — we simply don't have the additional capacity for new responsibilities," Maikalu said. She added that it will be important to have further discussion about how exactly the law would function in practice.

"What matters most is that responsibilities are clearly defined and we must ensure that children in need don't fall through the cracks between different agencies," Maikalu said.

Valner agreed with Maikalu's concerns and noted that many professionals in various sectors in Estonia are overworked. However, she sees collaboration and networking as a way to provide better support for children.

"In a school setting, not every problem needs to be solved by a social pedagogue or school psychologist. Every child and situation is different and what matters is identifying the trusted adult in the child's life," Valner said. "That could be a teacher, an extracurricular instructor or any other school staff member the child already feels safe with — and that person could play a key role in resolving the issue."

She added that it's important to resolve children's and families' issues at the first point of contact, where the problem actually arises.

"That way, support is more immediate, convenient and often more effective for the child and family, without needing to involve more complex and burdensome systems," Valner said.

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