Legal Perception of Rights of Mentally Handicapped Children

The thesis is called The Perception of Rights by Children with Mild Mental Retardation and is composed of the theoretical and practical parts. In the first part I deal with the characteristics of mental retardation, its cause, classification, history, the education of these children and their relations with others. The second chapter is focused on significant documents concerning the rights of children and adults with mental retardation. The third chapter concentrates on the research of children{\crq}s rights at the Faculty of Health and Social Studies, South Bohemian University. The theory is followed by the practical part containing the results and discussion with authors. The research was carried out by the method of directed interview (partly standardized method), by means of a questionnaire, which was created by Professor Gary Melton and his team in South Carolina in Columbia. Through this method and also the methodology of A. Saporiti the researches of legal awareness in children of school age, Roma children and the children in institutional care have been in progress since 1999. The research of legal awareness and perception of rights has not been carried out in children with mental retardation yet. The questionnaire contains identification questions (age, sex, and grade) and twelve model situations, where an individual adjudicates rights or not. The interviews were carried out in 116 respondents from three special schools (Havlíčkův Brod, Třeboň, Soběslav). I compared the results with the research of Mgr. Jany Stejskalové, carried out in 2005. The objective and the hypothesis were stated. The objective was to find out the perception of rights by children with mild mental retardation. The objective was fulfilled. The hypothesis was: The legal awareness of children with mild mental retardation increases with the increasing education of their parents. The hypothesis was not proved