7.7 Making health facilities more youth friendly
Croatia currently lacks a comprehensive strategy or policy document explicitly aimed at changing existing infrastructural capacities to be more youth-friendly in the full sense of the term However, there are certain tendencies outlined in some of the strategic frameworks.
In the school and university medicine services of county public health institutes, each of the teams (160 teams specialised in school and university medicine), responsible for each primary and secondary school, as well as university/faculty, has a polyvalent counselling service for pupils and students. This service is provided according to the Plan and Programme of Healthcare Measures of the Mandatory Health Insurance. These counselling services are accessible to young people within the education system. However, young people outside the system can access them only on an exceptional basis, in cases of ongoing procedures, as partners in couples counselling, or as parents of school children. The definition of a polyvalent counselling service implies that it covers a wide range of problems. The problems are only defined after an individual and/or group starts counselling. This does not exclude the possibility of specialised counselling addressing specific issues such as learning disabilities, mental health, reproductive health, or others.