Child protection unions have taken advantage of the international child rights daythis November 20, to once again denounce serious dysfunctions in the structures which welcome placed children in Seine-Maritime. They are 7000 children and adolescents in the department, placed by court decision in reception structures, mainly managed by the IDEFHIthe Departmental Institute of Children, Families and Disabilities for Integration, in Canteleu, in the Rouen metropolis, but also by the association Les Nids. The CGT and Sud trade union organizations in particular denounce the lack of financial, human, medical and legal resources to properly care for and support these suffering children. The concerns are not new but they are getting worse from year to year, with dramatic consequences for young people.
Prostitution, runaways, disturbing disappearances, violencethe situation described by Aïssa Latrèche, has never been so alarming and the daily life of children is sometimes worse than at their parents' home. “We take them away to say that they will be better off there, but sometimes you will find yourself in foster homes, the toilets don't work, the showers don't work, children sleeping in corridors, in offices or in services, the structures are pressure cookers” says the general secretary of the CGT of IDEFHI.
The abandonment of prevention from early childhood, and too much turnover of educators
The result of the abandonment of prevention which made it possible to help families in difficulty analyzes Natacha Ibrahim. She has been a specialist educator for 25 years at the Les Nids association and has clearly seen the situation deteriorate over time. “Around early childhood, we lost support in PMI where young parents could begin to name what was complicated for them in care. A child who has a very chaotic first life course, very degraded, it will already start to build itself in a fragile way and that will have very strong consequences later” assures Natacha. Young people in great suffering, and too much turnover among educators. At the Duclair children's village, 15 educators arrived and left in less than a year, says one of the structure's employees. It is impossible in these conditions to form a bond of trust according to Basile Gonzales, child psychiatrist at the therapeutic family home in Rouvray who sees children regularly, often accompanied by a different educator each time. “This turnover is the reactivation of abandonment experiences, the difficulty and distrust for these children in successfully establishing links since they are children who have attachment problems and to whom we send this message that is necessary not get attached because every time we get attached, we have to separate,” explains the doctor.
Young ASE girls recruited by a prostitution network
The consequences are dramatic for placed children; and professionals are regularly confronted with violence between young people, runaways, disappearances, and even prostitution. Several dozen young placed girls were thus approached and recruited by an organized network which prostituted them in hotels or Airbnbs on the left bank of Rouen, in the Saint-Sever district. “Children are brought back by pimps who threaten professionals, and who say 'don't complain, I'll bring it back to you whole'” reports François His, the CGT departmental head of health and social services. The department has set up working groups and collaborates with the police services to get young girls out of the network as quickly as possible. The unions are now waiting for the result of the evaluation mission voted on by the department. They would especially like to be able to be interviewed by the elected officials who make it up and who will hold it. their first meeting in a few days.
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