From November 11th to November 14th, 2009 in Limasol in Cyprus the sixth annual conference of Eurochild on the topic "Monitoring of Child Welfare - Better Practices and Policies" took place. As a regular member of Eurochild, SAPI was represented by Associate Professor Nelli Petrova-Dimitrova.

Participants in the conference were representatives of the Eurochild member organizations as well as representatives from the European Commission, researchers, and young people. The presentations and discussions were dedicated to the need of enough, trustful, and mostly comparative data about the situation of the children in Europe that would become the basis of serious political programs and actions. Once again the need to develop indicators for the welfare of the children, as well as indicators pointing at the achieved results, and not the actions taken, were discussed. An attempt was made, once again, to discuss seriously the question about child and youth participation in the development of the policies that are related to them. Representatives from the Child Parliament in Cyprus took part in the conference, as well ad youths that have been placed in child care provided by the state from Bulgaria, Estonia, and Wales, which poses a lot of questions, and, in particular, ethical questions. The direct participation or the active participation of children is supposed to be fully protected from the risk of manipulation, usage, and harming of the children. During the conference the hosts organized visits in the Centres for various social services for children. The discussions evolved in thematic work groups and SAPI took part in the group "Children Deprived of Parental Care". Discussed were mainly the questions related to the forthcoming introduction of the report based on the comparative research on the situation of children placed in care provided by the state in front of the European Commission in January, 2010.