Child Protection: Legal Concepts, Risk, Helplessness, and Competent Entities
Legal Concepts and Legal Environment for the Child
Situation of Social Vulnerability
Social vulnerability refers to situations where children face challenges that hinder their well-being and development.
Risk and Helplessness
Risk: Situations where children face harm but not severe enough to warrant removal from the home.
Helplessness: Situations where children are deprived of necessary moral and material support due to failure or inappropriate exercise of parental duties.
Competent Public Entities
In the CV, the Department of Social Welfare has exclusive jurisdiction in child protection, exercising responsibility for:
- Preventing social vulnerability
- Assessing and intervening in risk situations
- Assuming guardianship in cases of helplessness
- Implementing child protection measures
Child Protection Measures
Measures to protect children include:
- Family support
- Assumption of guardianship by a public entity
- Foster care
- Residential care
- Adoption
Legal Definitions and the Child’s Environment
Age of Majority
In Spain, the age of majority is 18 years (Article 12 of the Spanish Constitution).
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
Defines a child as every human being under 18 years (Article 1).
Emancipation
, where the child becomes independent of parental authority or guardianship to this subject. This can be by marriage, by grant deed and paternal age 16, by grant or by independent legal parent. The emancipated has a capacity similar to that of adult, full capacity to govern their person as more .- now the child is able to acquire skills as gradual and Paulato .- our constitution mentions the obligation public authorities to ensure social protection, economic and legal status of the family and in particular children. Thus, competition for the adoption of child protection measures, is unique and exclusive to the public, subject to judicial control post unprotected .- situations are classified into risk and situation of helplessness .- as Saez said Tejeda, risk is characterized as a situation where there is harm to the child that does not attain sufficient gravity to justify the removal of household hazardous situations .- are: the neglect of physical care, mental or child’s education, occasional or mild, the use of physical or emotional abuse (no abuse), these potentially harmful to the physical, mental and emotional, those of instability, difficulty in coping or parenting and relational. (with help to fix) any other that produces injury in the minor but not serious .- deserves in this case to local authorities the power to assess and intervene in situations of risk, to implement support measures to eradicate the factors that cause these .- measures are developed by the base .- There are two forms of protection of a technical nature which are the socio-educational or therapeutic, developed by professionals to prevent risk, and economic, benefits or aid are provided when the because of the risk stems from deficiencies or inadequacies económicas.-these steps are accompanied by special support measures such as compensatory programs of socio-educational, to promote the integration and facilitate the proper performance of parental functions, economic benefits to address the needs retail core, accompanied by lower attendance at school, involvement of volunteers in support roles, home care, social security programs for adolescents, counseling, mediation and family therapy and voluntary child custody situation of helplessness .- : is what actually occurs because of failure or the impossible or inappropriate exercise of the duties of protection to guard the children, when they are deprived of the necessary moral and material support .- are situations of distress, negligence in physical care, psychological or educational child, these being serious physical or emotional abuse with episodes of abuse,