At the Children’s Village of Sablons, in Gironde, Pauline L., 26, and Louis G., 31, wonder how their week will end. An educator left her post a few days earlier. The fragile balance on which the daily life of their house rested is hanging by a thread. The person supposed to take over from Pauline and Louis at the end of the week could spend eight days in a row, alone, with the six children. A difficult, exhausting scenario that tends to repeat itself.
From a distance, this children’s village looks like an ordinary housing estate. In front of the houses, rollerblades, scooters hang out here and there on the terraces. A playground with its slide, a balance bike forgotten in front of the porch. But, up close, it’s not a home like the others: 54 children, now integrated into the life of the town, have been placed here by the department’s child welfare department. These are not host families, but a village designed to offer them a stable home alongside their brothers and sisters.
Opened in 2020 by the Action Enfance foundation, which creates this kind of structure everywhere in France, co-financed by the Gironde department, this place welcomes children aged 3 to 17 years old together as siblings under the same roof. First housed in prefabs, the time of the construction of the village, they now have their own home since the beginning of the year 2022. These young people share an almost normal daily life with family educators who have become their referents.
A recourse to the interim
Here work 36 educators, two pairs taking care of six children per house, from their awakening to their departure for school. They manage meals, homework, activities. But also and above all their fears, their traumas, their violence, sometimes. The first pair lives in autarky with the children for eight days, before eight days of rest. The second pair then takes over. At least in theory.
In April, Action Enfance went through a critical recruitment period. To try to get out of the crisis due to Covid-19, the foundation, created in 1958, launched an unprecedented campaign: advertisements in the media, total overhaul of its website, creation of video capsules to present the profession of family educator. on social networks… When the operation was launched, 5% of the positions, out of 462, were not filled.
In the Sablons Children’s Village, six professionals are missing out of the 36 needed. Today, the number of missing family educators amounts to 2% at the national level, and, in Sablons, we are still looking to recruit two people. The use of temporary workers and fixed-term contracts was very difficult for the teams, but especially for the children. “They were in pain” confides Sophie B., head of department for a year at Sablons. “We rolled up our sleeves to stabilize the children. We had to help each other between the houses », continues Anaisse M., 44, educator. She hopes that the two missing educators can be hired quickly.
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