“Saturated justice”, associations “financially drained”, “social workers in overdrive”… Child protection professionals are calling for a major demonstration this Wednesday, September 25 in Paris, to raise awareness about “total emergency” experienced by their sector. “More than 3,000 children live on the streets, 3,350 are still waiting for a placement measure, 8,000 former children in care are homeless,” deplores Pierre-Alain Sarthou, general director of the National Convention of Child Protection Actors.
The sixty or so associations and federations that make up the “collective of 400,000” – a reference to the estimated number of children currently in need of protection in France – are meeting at the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris at 1 p.m. The procession will march to the Pantheon to denounce the “unprecedented dilapidation” of the sector.
Child protection professionals demand a “strong reaction” of the new government of Michel Barnier, according to Pierre-Alain Sarthou, who coordinates the “collective of 400,000”. “All the warning lights are red, we are facing a crisis of a truly unprecedented scale”he warns. “The State must react. There are laws on child protection, they are good laws, but today, they are not respected, they are not applied.”regrets Pierre-Alain Sarthou.
On the ground, professionals in the sector are talking about court decisions which “take several weeks, even several months”to be executed, leaving hundreds of minors within their “abusive families”. And young adults who have left the Child Welfare Assistance (ASE) system would be anything but spared: they “find themselves on the street and slide into spirals of exclusion leading them to live on the streets”denounces Pierre-Alain Sarthou.
Political failures
Long invisible, the situation of some 377,000 children subject to a protection measure under ASE has returned to the forefront in recent years with the death of several children in care.
A parliamentary commission of inquiry, which had begun in mid-May to look into the shortcomings of child protection policies, came to an abrupt end with the dissolution of the National Assembly in early June. The PS group has since tabled a motion for a resolution to recreate this commission.
The UNICEF representative in France, Adeline Hazan, urged the new Prime Minister Michel Barnier in early September to “to make childhood an absolute priority of his mandate”believing that children “couldn’t wait any longer”.