Title: Family advocacy project
Country: FRANCE
Form(s) of actions:
Research project and report.
Type(s) of actions
Research and proposals for solutions.
Summary:
The “Chantier Familles” was a participatory research and advocacy project on child protection and specifically, the placement of children in poverty in foster care, and how this contributes to the persistence of poverty.
Aim:
Led by ATD Fourth World Europe, this multi-country and multi-year research and advocacy project on families in poverty focused on the experience of child protection services as witnessed and experienced by parents of children taken into foster homes or foster care. It provides an in-depth analysis of the difficulties in relating with child protection services, the injustices experienced by parents, and it offers concrete policy recommendations to modify the existing system. It explores the role that child placement plays in the intergenerational persistence of poverty.
Main stakeholders:
ATD Fourth World (in France, local sections and in other countries – UK, Belgium, Poland, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland), parents in poverty, academics.
Issues addressed:
This action addressed numerous issues in the child protection system. It analyses the placement of children into foster care as a factor in the intergenerational persistence of poverty, and points to a number of shortcomings and dysfunctional practices in the French (and other) child protection system(s), and offers concrete pathways as solutions for reducing the institutional maltreatment experienced by families affected by child protection measures.
Outcome:
Report, meetings with professionals and decision-makers, empowerment of participants.
Sustainability:
The report states that the next steps of the project will be focused towards enacting change in each of the participating countries by seeking to put forward the recommendations outlined in the report.
Link(s): https://www.atd-fourthworld.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/07/ChantierFamilles-fr-3.pdf
Data source: Internet