Deprived of a canteen, “my daughter has nowhere to go”

“On Friday, it was my mother in a walker who had to pick up my daughter on crutches from school. You can imagine!” At the origin of this incongruous situation, the refusal of the Intercommunal Group for Extracurricular Activities (GIAP) to take care of a child during the lunch break. Enough to make his mother scream. Exasperated, she says: “My daughter sprained her foot due to a ski fall on January 3. So she is on crutches. I was asked to find a wheelchair to make it easier to get to the school canteen, and that’s what I did.”

A few days later, GIAP announced that special assistance must be organized for the little girl. A request that goes through the Department of Public Instruction. “While waiting for a response, my daughter was deprived of a canteen for three days. Basically, get over it! My husband and I work 100% without the possibility of teleworking. My in-laws are abroad and my mother has very poor health. My daughter has nowhere to go.” Due to a lack of solution, the child showed up for after-school work and was ultimately taken care of for two days. But last Thursday, “the manager threatened to call social services if my daughter was still there the next day. So, I sent my mother away sick.”

The same day, the result of the request came: no assistance could be found for the 9-year-old child. “What am I supposed to do? He still has a week left on crutches and that could be extended. I’m referred to Little Red Riding Hood, but they don’t take shifts of less than 3 hours. Plus, it costs an arm and a leg.”

The mother denounces a system which does not take into account the professional obligations of parents. “We should neither be the first nor the last in this situation. Why are no solutions offered to us? In 2023, a single mother already denounced this GIAP practice.

Contacted, the director, Floriane Demont, explained that “the GIAP cannot under any circumstances respond to all individual situations. The course of after-school care involves a lot of travel and a certain degree of autonomy for the children. We cannot therefore accommodate a child with a specific individual need who cannot enroll in collective care.”

She clarified that children on crutches are not “refused” and added: “We are temporarily postponing reception until an AIS (editor’s note: school integration assistants) is possible. The system works in the vast majority of cases, however, it is not always possible for the canton to find AIS for both the school and the GIAP wherever this is necessary.” She estimated that due to delays (read below), this type of situation would represent one or two cases per year out of around 30,000 children in after-school settings.

A solution was found on Monday