The report of 14 missing children over seven months triggered an investigation that has uncovered an international child trafficking network operating from the Canary Islands to France. Between November 2014 and May of this year, 13 children disappeared from a center in Arrecife (Lanzarote) and another from a children's center in San Bartolomé de Tirajana (Gran Canaria). Spanish police have arrested eleven people, and four are already in pretrial detention for crimes including organized crime, document forgery, offenses against family rights and duties, obstruction of justice, and child pornography. The police force does not rule out further developments in the case. In fact, the investigation remains open to locate and protect the missing children and to establish the necessary international police cooperation channels to clarify the facts. So far, investigators have confirmed that the criminal group used routes and contacts in Morocco, Ivory Coast, and Spain to fraudulently transport children to France. The 14 disappearances that triggered the alarm led to an operation to locate the minors and clarify how they had disappeared from the centers where they were receiving protection.

Amid the restructuring process of the new Directorate General for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA), the families—around fifty, mostly single-parent families—of minors under the radar of the Department of Social Rights are demanding to be heard. Members of the Assembly of Broken Families for the DGAIA, a group that claims to have suffered institutional abuse and arbitrary separations from their children, asked this Friday the Ombudsman's deputy for children to intercede on their behalf to meet with the regional ministry. Government sources confirm they have not received a formal request for a meeting from the group, but they open the door to "any contribution" that seeks to improve the system.

O. (a pseudonym) no longer fears that her daughter, who will turn eight in September, might be taken away. The child is no longer the same. She no longer hits her or calls her. Nine months ago, the two families were one of twenty families participating in the Whanau pilot project, promoted by the Casal dels Infants del Raval. The initiative seeks to ensure that children and adolescents from vulnerable families grow up in supportive and supportive environments, to prevent them from being separated from their parents and entering juvenile detention centers. "To do this, we design a personalized work plan for each family, understanding their reality and working in a network with social services, schools, and other community stakeholders," explains Esther Mas, a social worker for the Whanau plan.

They say they are in the reserve, that they have taken the summer as a "break" before accepting a new foster child who, for various reasons, cannot live with their parents. Josep Sala and Esther Bertran are teachers who during the 1990s had taken in children from Bosnia and the Sahara in the summer, and who, once retired, invest time, effort, and enthusiasm in taking in children under the guardianship of the general management of the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA)).

The idea of professionalizing foster care has come to an end. The Department of Social Rights and Inclusion has decided to close the Specialized Family Foster Care Program (AFE-EP), a pilot program inspired by the experience established over the past two decades in the Basque Country. The goal was to remove children between the ages of 7 and 18 with serious behavioral or mental health disorders from the centers under the care of the Generalitat (Catalan Government) so they could grow up in a home that would not only offer them love but also intensive care. Of the four families that were in the program, three are determined to continue, while the fourth child is about to move to another family. The decision was made for "administrative reasons," explains Elena Lledós, director of the Catalan Institute for Foster Care and Adoption (ICAA), who does not reveal whether it will be resumed later.

The General Directorate for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA, which replaces the DGAIA) has begun sending emails to young people who have left care to claim alleged "undue payments" of the benefits to which, by law, they are entitled from the age of majority until the age of 23. According to ARA, "hundreds" have been sent and the amounts claimed amount to more than 10,000 euros and, in some cases, the figure exceeds 36,000 euros. These messages are sent just two weeks after the The Audit Office estimates undue non-payments at 167 million euros. granted by the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion to some 230,000 families, of which 4.7 million (2.8%) corresponded to those given to young people who had spent part of their childhood in the care system. They are demanding around 30,000 euros. "I wanted to reassure him by telling him it must have been a mistake," explains the 22-year-old. "They're demanding that I be a high school student and I haven't had any absences that long, and I don't have any negative reports from my mentor," she tells this newspaper indignantly. "It seems like they're going to screw the weakest of us by putting spokes in our wheels; "Who can return these amounts?" asks the girl, who claims cases with "exaggerated amounts" have caused these young people to become nervous and have made their phones and WhatsApp messages explode. The refund file, once the review process is complete, must be reimbursed by the interested party. Nor will they understand that they have ten days from receiving the email to make the relevant allegations and submit the documentation. "Many will be left as true defaulters," she laments.

In the report, Ombudsman Maria Àngels Cabacés had found irregularities in the collection of the former care benefit from young people who were working or living outside of Catalonia, criteria that exclude them from being eligible for the aid. She attributed these improper payments to the department's own technological deficiencies in updating the beneficiaries' data and to the fact that it does not share data with the Treasury or Social Security. She recalculated the amount of the benefit she should have received. In response, she claims, she received a "you continue collecting the benefit and you'll notify the Treasury Department next year's tax return." They were unable to survive, unaware that, once they receive the benefit, since they already receive a salary, they will not be entitled to collect it, or at least not in full. She has a certified receipt.

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Very rarely does the decision to remove custody reach the courts, and when it does, the ruling almost always favors the administration. Only 4% of biological families who have custody removed DGPPIA (the acronym for the General Directorate for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents, which replaces the DGAIA))withdraws guardianship of the children They appeal against the administrative measure that in many cases means that the child must be admitted to a foster home or live with uncles or grandparents. And, according to data from the DGAIA, in nine out of ten cases they lose the legal battle because the judge upholds the decision of a but this is a snapshot that coincides with the most recent data provided by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ): of the 10,000 withdrawals of guardianships that are issued throughout the State each year, a thousand families resort to the courts and only in 2% of cases are the destitutions revoked by Marta Tortosa and counselor of the Catalan Bar Council (Cicac), it must be taken into account that if there are so few judicial resources, it is because the affected families "are vulnerable, without resources," and cannot afford a lawyer to file a claim. "Court lawyers can only intervene when necessary, and an administrative procedure against the DGAIA is not considered that," he points out in an interview with ARA. Regarding the decision-making process for withdrawing custody, Gellida criticizes: "The administration investigates the matter, issues the resolution, and also executes the agreement. In a state of law, we have always kept in mind that the law is made by one person, executed by another, and the one who convicts is the judiciary. Even in the criminal sphere, there is one judge who instructs and another." He concludes: "At the DGAIA, they do everything; what we want is for there to be a separation of powers."

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The Department of Social Rights improperly paid €167.56 million in economic benefits during the 2016-2024 period. This is confirmed by a report from the Audit Office released this Wednesday, which indicates that these improper payments "are not only due to administrative errors" but also to "structural problems of transparency and governance." Some of these payments, unclaimed and time-barred due to the administration's inaction in monitoring and controlling them, have resulted in "effective damage to public finances" and, therefore, could give rise to "acts that are administratively and judicially prosecuted." In this case, which primarily affects the guaranteed citizen income and long-term care benefits, legal proceedings could be opened against those responsible for improperly authorizing these payments. For its part, the Department of Social Rights maintains that €156 million of the €167 million has already been claimed from the beneficiaries of these benefits.

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Free legal aid from the moment a child neglect case begins and limiting the time families have a risk file open and are monitored by social services. These are two of the proposals made by the Catalan Bar Council to improve and modernize the child protection system, which it considers obsolete and ill-adapted to current social needs.

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The President of the Generalitat (Catalan Government), Salvador Illa, has opened the door to studying a "more collective decision-making mechanism" so that the application of protective measures for minors in situations of vulnerability and at risk of abandonment, including the withdrawal of guardianship from the family, does not fall solely on an official from the Directorate General for Child and Adolescent Care. In fact, the President has proposed that "in some cases" a judge should intervene: "The public servant who must make the decision has a great deal of responsibility."

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The news about the rapist of a twelve-year-old girl under the guardianship of the DGAIA and the details of how he recorded her subjecting her to other pedophiles has created, in the state media, an inappropriate journalistic comparison with a strikingly unfortunate communicative formula. Networks such as Cuatro and La Sexta have used the concept "the Catalan Pelicote" to refer to the accused. We saw him on Thursday in On everyone's lips, when the program asked for the details of "the Catalan Pelicot prostitution network". The same thing happened in News Four, where they spoke of the fact as "the Pelicot case of Barcelona". In Better late than never They repeated the appeal. They weren't the only ones. Radio stations like SER and all kinds of digital media have also done so. Even the RTVE website, surprisingly, uses this concept.

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The administration denies the right to free legal aid to young foreigners formerly under the Generalitat's guardianship. They arrived in the State risking their lives, alone and without family references and many of them, due to bureaucratic problems or the lack of a passport, are left without legal aid as they turn 18. Although they have the right to it, many of them do not have a residence permit or, when they have to renew it at the age of 21, they find that they have to prove they have a €2,000 monthly salary, an amount which in practice slams the door shut on many of them. Many organisations that take care of them and even the Directorate General of Child Care (DGAIA) note that this often pushes them into delinquency to survive.

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