Dozens of families are mobilizing to preserve La Source bleue, a place of reception and early intervention that helps many families in Geneva. Several positions are threatened, but the canton contests any job cuts.
The Department of Public Instruction (DIP) plans not to renew several positions from the next school year within the parenting support and prevention of disorders among toddlers structure.
However, La Source bleue welcomes more than a hundred children aged 0 to 4 years old each year. She also supports and socializes their parents, often from a migrant background and therefore more easily isolated. And above all, it detects language and behavioral disorders in toddlers before school and redirects families if necessary.
This mission was even recognized as being of public utility by the Court of Auditors in 2023. The control body then noted that the structure lacked resources and encouraged the canton to continue its financing.
“The development of our children, a treasure”
However, conversely, the State plans to do without several speech therapists, psychomotor therapists and educators within the Blue Source. Although this only represents a total of 1.7 full-time equivalents, the measure concerns more than a third of the current workforce spread across the two sites of Pâquis and Libellules (Vernier).
In response, a group of worried mothers mobilized in front of City Hall on Wednesday. They submitted a petition with several hundred signatures. For them, the decision taken by the Medical-Pedagogical Office is incomprehensible. It risks undermining a “fairly complete” place, deplores a demonstrator, “a space where we can be together, parents, children and professionals”.
“We are going to take away what we had as a treasure, that is to say the development of our children,” testifies another mother. “When we are parents and we find ourselves all alone with a child who does not speak and we do not know how to react, it is one of the most important things,” she emphasizes.
The canton refutes
Contacted, the DIP refutes any deletion. He explains that the positions had been increased temporarily and advertised as such. This is only a “return to normal”, according to the department, which specifies that these resources will be reallocated from the start of the school year to specialized education in schools.
He also questions the belonging of the Blue Source to the Medical-Pedagogical Office, considering that it is “not a question of therapeutic services” and that the structure affects children of preschool age, an area which falls under municipal jurisdiction.
Charlotte Frossard/jop
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