Children in care: how are foster families supervised?

While the defendants, as part of the trial opened this Monday in Châteauroux, admitted to having lost their approval authorizing them to welcome children from the ASE, how are host families in France selected and controlled? What is the role of departments in this control, and how can we explain the state failures observed today?

A permanent lack of resources

From 2010 to 2017, children from child welfare in the Nord department, placed in families without approval in Indre, Creuse and Haute-Vienne, suffered physical and psychological violence. , humiliation and forced labor.

Faced with this fear, Lyes Louffs deplores the institutional conditions which are responsible for placements harming the well-being of children: “The child protection system is in such a state that the question that arises for us is above all how many places are available. We are not necessarily going to look for a place that will correspond to needs. We will look where there is space. There are no longer any criteria that will justify placement in a foster family rather than a home or vice versa. Children are placed in establishments that are unable to meet their needs or meet their basic needs.

Restoring massive human and financial resources to child protection social services is, according to Lyes Louffsan absolute necessity: “In the years to come, other systems and new reception places must be developed. This situation is terrible, because we know that the judicial placement measures ordered by children’s judges, due to lack of places and lack of resources, are not carried out..”

The State called into question

The skills related to child protection being in the hands of the departments, to Lyes Louffsthe State finds itself at fault: “We are faced with manifest negligence on the part of departmental services. They did not check that this structure was correctly authorized, they did not check that the host families had obtained their approval, they did not check the conditions care and respect for the fundamental rights of these children What shocks me is my impression that once children enter the child protection system, their lives are completely demonetized. It is worth less than. that of a child who would have remained with his family Children placed in child welfare, even if there are reports, as they are placed children, we don’t care..”

How to reform the functioning of Child Social Assistance?

Pour Lyes Louffsrestructuring the ASE system must involve a transformation of the hiring system and the general legal framework: “We must massively recruit trained and qualified professionals. What is extremely shocking today in child protection is that it is a system that is completely deregulated. There is no obligation to having obtained a social work diploma to practice. The law does not set specific rules for recruitment In establishments, there are no supervision rates and standards either. a professional can find himself alone in the field with 20 or 30 children for whom he is responsible.

“This endangers these children, it exhausts professionals, it facilitates violent acts and therefore institutional violence. This is why I demand that each child in care be able to benefit from the assistance of a lawyer .“