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The question of parental abandonment, the declaration of abandonment and simple adoption is a very sensitive subject that has for years aroused dense debates with ultra-strong positions.
On the one hand: the advocates of child protection focused on the persistence of the link between the child and his family, even if it means artificially maintaining this link and inflicting repeated placements on the child.
On the other: the supporters of early detection of parental abandonment and of an acceleration of the declaration of abandonment which will then allow the child to access the status of ward of the state and to be adopted. Dominique Bertinotti is clearly positioned on the second slope. “We have a family tradition. For children who we know will not return home, should we not consider another system? Facilitate the adoption procedure? ”
Child protection laws, eternal restart
She is not the first minister to be concerned about this issue and to want to give a “second family chance” to children who are supposed to “languish” in the reception structures of the ASE. In her time, Nadine Morano had carried a bill on adoption (never submitted to a vote but strongly criticized), one of the components of which stated: “Social assistance for children (ASE) will have to evaluate each year, from the first year of placement, if there is abandonment of the child by his biological family: the Public Prosecutor’s Office may then request a further investigation or refer directly to the High Court a request for a declaration of abandonment, which would make it fully adoptable ”. Yesterday, in Nantes, Dominique Bertinotti faced her with the deputy prosecutor in charge of civil affairs. This is what he advocated: ” It would be relevant to allow the prosecution to seize the court when a placement seems to be renewed without asking the question of the best interests of the child. ».
As we can see, the protection of children and the ideological battles that punctuate its history transcend political divisions. It was a right-wing Minister, Philippe Bas, who passed a law reforming child protection in 2007 and placing the primacy of the biological link at the heart of the ASE’s missions, but she is also a Minister of right, Nadine Morano, who wanted to speed up the abandonment procedure and move the cursor towards an earlier break in the family bond. A left-wing Minister is now taking up the torch. With this size shade: Dominique Bertinotti wishes to use simple adoption, which makes it possible to offer a new home to a child without erasing his ties of filiation with his biological parents.
Abandonment without definition or reference
On this subject it is very difficult to distinguish between reality and ideological positions. Many social workers readily admit that children placed very early, who we know from the start that they will never return home, are not, however, the subject of an abandonment procedure and a stable project on the duration. “It is absolutely necessary to make the day before in the departments to identify the children who have not seen their parents for six months, it is urgent to have a frame of reference on the notion of neglect, evaluation techniques which will allow the teams to be released from their representations ”, poses Anne Roussé, of the General Council of Meurthe et Moselle, who launched with others a plea for national adoption. For my part, I have the impression that the concern and questioning of social workers in the face of long placements and erratic paths for many children tend to increase. Professionals seem much quicker today to deplore a somewhat dogmatic tendency to want to maintain a link that has in itself become harmful. But that’s just an impression.
Figures, the great French artistic blur
The activists of the “familyist” cause, those who in any case consider that the primary role of the ASE is to allow a child to be educated by his biological parents, are still very active. However, one of the most famous heralds of the “family bond”, Jean-Pierre Rosencveig, president of the Bobigny children’s court, is himself in charge of supervising one of the working groups of the family bill. We imagine that the discussions with the Minister must be lively. Jean-Pierre Rosencveig has always affirmed that there were very few children really abandoned by their parents (not enough in any case for it to be judicious to mention a dysfunction) and that adoption could therefore only constitute ‘a very minor child protection tool. To decide, it is therefore essential to know the exact number of abandoned children among the minors placed. The services of the Ministry evoke a figure of 15.000 children, which would in fact justify reviewing our child protection system. But in the absence of a precise definition and reliable statistical tools, it can only be an estimate, therefore easily questionable, and contested, by supporters of the family bond. This artistic vagueness does not facilitate the task of outside observers who try to define the problematic, journalists for example. Because who to believe? To whom can we attribute the greatest legitimacy in this recurrent and complex debate? How can we be as close as possible to the reality of practices and experiences when precisely, from one specialist to another, from one professional in the field to another, the answers are diametrically opposed?
This is why the lack of reliable statistics in many of the subjects that I am led to relay has become my little obsession at the moment.