The Role of Educators in Child Protection: A Comprehensive Guide
The Suspension of Parental Authority and Guardianship
Residential Care
The suspension of parental authority or guardianship, often involving the appointment of a guardian by a judge, is a measure taken to ensure the child’s well-being. In such cases, an institution assumes the responsibility of providing for the child’s needs, including care, support, and education. This temporary custody is assumed by the public when:
- Parents or guardians request it due to their inability to care for the child.
- Parents or guardians declare helplessness.
- A judge deems it necessary.
This guardianship is typically implemented through:
- Residential care: The child resides in a center where the director acts as their guardian.
- Foster care: The child is placed with a family chosen by the public entity, and the designated person within the entity acts as the child’s guardian.
- Adoption: This option aims to provide a permanent family for the child and hinders their return to their biological family.
Types of Residential Care Centers
The Department of Social Welfare operates various centers across three communities:
- Reception centers: These 24-hour centers serve as the initial point of contact for the minor. The child’s case is assessed, and they are referred to the appropriate center within 45 days.
- Residential centers: Children reside in these centers permanently while efforts are made to work with their families.
- Functional homes: Similar to residential centers, these homes have one or more permanent residents who provide care and supervision (similar to supervised apartments).
- Emancipation centers: These centers cater to youth aged 16 to 18, assisting with deinstitutionalization, independence, and entry into the workforce.
- Day centers: These centers offer training, cultural activities, interventions, school support, social intervention, counseling, and recreational activities. They can be conventional support centers or focus on educational and socio-professional integration. Management of these centers is shared between local authorities, NGOs, and territorial divisions of the Department of Social Welfare.
Foster Care
Foster care can be:
- Simple: Temporary care due to the child’s circumstances.
- Permanent: When the child’s age or circumstances necessitate a long-term arrangement.
- Pre-adoptive: Aimed at providing an adjustment period for the child and potential adoptive family.
Based on legal provisions, foster care can be:
- Administrative: Granted with permission from parents or guardians who have not been deprived of parental rights.
- Temporary: Implemented with parental consent when the public body deems it appropriate, with court approval.
Additionally, foster care can be provided by extended family or specifically trained families.
Adoption
Adoption, through a court decision, establishes a legal parent-child relationship between the adoptive parents and the adopted child, severing ties with the child’s biological family.
The Educator’s Role in Child Protection
Within a multidisciplinary team, educators play a crucial role in child protection by:
- Making proposals regarding the child’s well-being.
- Participating in decision-making processes.
- Providing and seeking advice from the team.
- Coordinating efforts with relevant parties.
- Reporting concerns and observations.
- Developing proposals for the school, general management courts, or independently.
- Collaborating in the referral process for minors.
- Participating in, evaluating, and coordinating work plans.
- Attending meetings and case conferences.
Other Child Protection Services
Several other services contribute to child protection, including:
- Child welfare hotlines
- Legal services for children
- Diagnostic, treatment, and reporting services for sexual abuse (Espill)
- Infoabu service
- Family orientation and mediation programs
- Meeting places
- Socio-laboral services
The Social Role of Educators in Child Protection
Evolving Profiles of Children in Need
As societal realities change, so do the profiles of children requiring protection. According to Saez Tejerina, the majority are now young foreigners or children facing behavioral issues, often with an antisocial component, stemming from family, school, or social problems.
Defining Social Education
Before delving into the educator’s role, it’s essential to define”social education” Sáez Carreras describes it as”the right to citizenship as embodied in the recognition of a profession of pedagogical, educational contexts and generators and formative mediation actions are fields of the social educator”
The Educator’s Primary Goal
In this context, the educator’s primary goal is to”assist in the process of socialization and personal development of children” This involves:
- Addressing and compensating for personal and social adjustment difficulties.
- Promoting autonomy and self-reliance.
- Developing educational and cultural awareness.
- Enhancing information-seeking skills, critical thinking, and analysis of reality.
- Encouraging active participation.
- Promoting and improving children’s skills and abilities.
- Advocating for social change.
- Fostering cultural, labor, and community development.
- Nurturing associative skills and collaboration.
Tasks and Functions of Educators
Educators in child protection perform various tasks and functions, including:
- Providing education, information, advice, and guidance.
- Facilitating and animating groups and group activities.
- Liaising with relevant institutions.
- Developing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating programs, services, and campaigns.
- Organizing, planning, and evaluating intervention programs.
- Observing and identifying the needs and characteristics of the child’s environment.
- Managing and administering various services.
Understanding Child Protection
Child protection encompasses a range of actions aimed at preventing and addressing situations of social vulnerability that any minor might encounter.
Scope of Child Protection
In Spain, the child protection system covers all individuals under 18, regardless of nationality, who require protection.
Legal Framework
The system is primarily based on Law 1/96, 93/01, and decrees such as 28/09.
Situations of Vulnerability
– the risk: this is characterized as a situation where there is harm to the child, which is not serious enough to separate it from the family, the intervention is done within the environment, these actions are under municipal jurisdiction and ss are the teams who take measures to support calls family, “as programs to encourage integration and the proper exercise of parental functions and improvements, economic benefits, together with the lower attendance in schools, involvement of volunteers in support roles to children, home help, care day centers, social security programs conducive to finding work, when you leave the education system, programs, psychosocial counseling, mediation and family therapy, custody of the child voluntarily. In this case we have day care centers which we define below .- and situations of helplessness, which means that in fact occurs because of failure or the impossible or inappropriate exercise of the duties of protection under the law, for guardianship of minors .- This action is regional competition .- consequences of homelessness are: “the assumption of custody by operation of law (is characterized by the absence of intervention by the judicial authority)