Educators and foster families will now have their criminal records systematically checked before being entrusted with children in danger, the Secretary of State in charge of the file, Charlotte Caubel, announced on Sunday.
This measure, provided for in the Taquet law adopted at the beginning of the year by Parliament, will apply on November 1, said Charlotte Caubel in an interview with the magazine “Restricted zone» of M6, devoted to the failures of the Childhood Social Assistance (ASE).
Read alsoChild protection: a law “tastes like unfinished” to reform a system in crisis
In this report, two journalists filmed their hiring as host families with a hidden camera without the slightest check by the ASE services on their background, or even on their identity. “This situation can no longer exist“, commented Charlotte Caubel in an interview which must be broadcast after the report.
Any professional in contact with a child, but also any volunteer in his entourage, for example the spouse of a family carer, or his children over 13 years old – must be subject to “regularly“Such checks, via the criminal record and the file of perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses (Fijais), added the Secretary of State for Children. Less than three years after a report by “Restricted zone» which had already denounced serious shortcomings of the ASE, this new opus shows that the situation has hardly improved in certain homes.
The journalists thus returned to a home in Seine-Saint-Denis (north-eastern suburb of Paris) where they had filmed the daily lives of teenagers left to their own devices. Since then, the premises have been renovated but the young people still occupy their day by keeping watch for cannabis sellers from neighboring towns. Teenage girls housed in another home regularly prostitute themselves, and their educators, filmed with a hidden camera, confess their helplessness.
“Shocked“by these”malfunctions“, Charlotte Caubel assured that several dozen people would be recruited to strengthen controls on these establishments, and that 300 people would be trained for three years to make controls more effective. The report also shows the situation of teenagers who have dropped out of school and are suffering from mental disorders, placed by the ASE in sordid hotels where they spend all their days for months. The Taquet law has precisely planned to put an end to these situations, recalls the Secretary of State. A “adaptation timeis necessary, butat the beginning of 2024 there will be no more children in social hotels in France“, she assured.