Families for whom the Generalitat opens an investigation for the abandonment of underage children will have free legal assistance from the moment the administrative procedure begins. This is one of the proposals put forward by the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion within the reform of the child protection system announced a year ago in which professionals from different sectors have participated. In fact, a large part of the demands from the legal sector (lawyers and prosecutors) have been incorporated, which at some point also coincided with affected families in criticizing that the withdrawal of custody is a non-transparent process.

She doesn't know if it was a smell, the feeling of coldness of body and spirit, but on January 24, 2014, Marta Plujà says she almost had to die to be reborn. That day she suffered a stroke that helped her, definitively, to “wake up” and “break the silence” that she had carried since she was very young without even knowing it. She also doesn't know when the sexual assaults and rapes by a relative began or ended. She calculates it based on the aggressor's biography, who is 10 years older and was already of legal age. “I would have been 9, 10, 11 years old,” she says.

A 42-year-old man and a 43-year-old woman have been in pretrial detention since last Friday, accused of habitual abuse, serious bodily harm, and sexual assault against their son, a child just over a month old, who has been placed under the guardianship of the Catalan government. The couple was arrested last Wednesday, March 18, and appeared before the Barcelona court specializing in violence against children and adolescents last Friday. The judge ordered them held in pretrial detention without bail, as explained this Monday by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC). Among the arguments put forward by the prosecution to request the parents' imprisonment were the risk that the abuse would continue and the possibility that the arrested individuals might choose to flee given the severity of the penalties they face. The prosecution also saw the risk that the parents could "violate the child's legal rights." For all these reasons, he requested pretrial detention and the suspension of parental rights as precautionary measures.

Sexual content platforms are presented almost like a scratch-off ticket, a convenient and quick way to make money. Through good marketing and support frominfluencers and theopaque internet algorithm, networks like OnlyFans or the websites of Addia sugar Asymmetrical relationships between men and young women in exchange for gifts or money have become an option not only for adults but also target teenagers, who receive advertising and calls urging them to share sexual content as if it were their own initiative. A survey conducted by Save the Children of a thousand young Spaniards indicates that one in forty—2.5%—received financial compensation, a gift, or a favor in exchange for sending erotic material when they were underage. An additional 15% report knowing of cases where individuals have agreed to send such images.

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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The Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion, Mònica Martínez Bravo, defended this Wednesday in Parliament the capacity of the DGAIA to protect the minor sexually exploited by a pedophilia network, although she also admitted that she hadn't done enough to spare him the pain. With the report prepared by the department's legal services, the minister appeared before the committee at her own request, not with the intention of "finding culprits," she clarified, but with the desire to rekindle a system that "many years ago" needed a refoundation"The system protected the minor as best it could, and despite the support of professionals, it failed, and nothing can compensate for the damage done to her during her adolescence," she stressed.

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A new one DGPPIA (the acronym for the General Directorate for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents, which replaces the DGAIA)) less privatized and with greater participation by workers in centers for children under the care of the Generalitat (Catalan government). These were two of the demands raised this Tuesday by the CGT and CATAC unions at a rally outside the institution's headquarters. They also denounced the reform plans presented by the Ministry of Social Rights and Inclusion as nothing more than "a smokescreen" to keep things as they are. The event brought together fifty educators, one day before Minister Mònica Martínez Bravo appears before a parliamentary committee to explain the changes to the system.

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As she enters adolescence, Amina S. dreams of being able to enter the academy and earn a place in the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) or the Local Police. Before that, however, she will have to obtain her papers and even acquire Spanish nationality. For now, at 17, after four years in Catalonia, she is waiting for her case to be resolved, once her father has regularized his status and can begin the process of obtaining family roots for his two children, while her mother must follow a separate procedure. "Not having papers makes you feel different, because you so often feel like there's an invasion of illegal immigrants!" says this young woman, who only thinks "about the future" and has never been able to return to her country of origin, not even when a grandmother died. "We wouldn't have been able to go back," she notes.

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In the middle of a reputational crisis, the Government reformulates the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA)) and creates a new agency, focused more on prevention to minimize the withdrawal of guardianships from minors. The new Directorate General for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA) will introduce tools for greater control in management, but will also lose powers, as it will no longer have the financial powers it had until now: that of contracting foster care places in residential centers where minors separated from their families are housed, nor will it be responsible for processing them. Financial aid, which until now was managed through a contract with third-sector entities, will pass into the hands of the administration.

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David Rodríguez, recently elected vice-dean of the College of Social Work of Catalonia, warns of the shortcomings of the child protection system and defends a Structural reform of the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA) focused on prevention, humanization, and active listening to minors and families.

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The day Antonia—a fictitious name like the other witnesses—finally signed the temporary protective custody of her teenage son, she ended up in an ambulance and treated in a hospital following a brutal panic attack. After months of internal debate and struggling with feelings of guilt, she agreed to abandon the boy so that the protection system of the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA) could provide him with a residential placement through the fast-track system, aware that the child's behavioral problems and autism would make living together difficult.

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The Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion, Mònica Martínez Bravo, is in a hurry to close the Scandals affecting the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA), which have once again put the child protection system in the spotlight. In less than 24 hours, the regional minister brought forward the timeline for the presentation of the "refoundation" of the DGAIA: while at Monday's meeting with the third sector and professional associations, the department gave a deadline of between two and three months to have a proposal ready, this Tuesday morning the regional spokesperson, Silvia Paneque, shortened the period to between three. Finally, Martínez Bravo concluded that the plan will be made public "next week."

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The Minister of Social Rights, Mònica Martínez Bravo, announced this Monday morning that the Government is starting work to carry out a "comprehensive transformation" of the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA). Martínez Bravo said this after a meeting with third sector social entities and schools, proposing "proposals" that the entities have been demanding for years, and will set up two working groups with experts: one will be in charge of how to improve prevention with families, to detect risk situations to reduce the withdrawal of guardianship, while the other group will focus on the conditions of the centers. The Minister has said that the current is a "moment of catharsis" for the entire 12 years in care who was sexually exploited should be a "window of opportunity" to address, now, a new strategy and planning for the entire system, according to sources present at the meeting explained in ARA. -BK_SLT_LNA~ better, but they have not given details of the calendar or what the changes will be. The case of the minor and the shortcomings that experts and minors highlight, the minister admitted in a brief appearance before the media that the problems at the DGAIA are evident: "There are management difficulties, a lack of resources and protocols that sometimes do not work," she said, adding that the agency must adapt to the "social complexity" and new challenges.

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"In the end, I got in the car too, let him kiss me, and the man gave me some tobacco." The person who explains this is a 20-year-old woman who was under the guardianship of the General Directorate for the Care of Children and Adolescents (DGAIA) for much of her childhood. She never told anyone. The girl, who wishes to remain anonymous, lived in three different centers, the so-called CRAE (National Centers for the Protection of Children and Adolescents), where she lived with other minors who, for various reasons, were also separated from their families.

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The head of Social Rights, Mònica Martínez Bravo, has assured that in the transfer of portfolio that Carles Campuzno's team made to her, she was not informed about the case of the 12-year-old girl under administrative protection who was sexually exploited for months by a pedophile network in Barcelona. In an interview on TV3, the minister indicated that she also has no evidence that the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA) opened a file upon learning of the case of repeated rapes against this minor, although she also did not want to rule out the possibility that it was opened and not transferred to her when they took over in August of last year.

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The three legal cases opened against the Barcelona pedophilia macro-network add up to sixteen people under investigation, including The 45-year-old electrician for whom the Prosecutor's Office has requested a sentence of 107 years in prison to rape and record child pornography at the expense of a minor in the care of the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA). In parallel, and after 48 hours of silence since the accusation became known, the Generalitat has announced that it has opened an information file to review the DGAIA's reaction when it detected, in 2021, the repeated rapes of the girl, who was 12 years old and was under the care of the administration—her legal guardians were still her parents—by a man who facilitated the rape of other pedophiles.

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It's almost three years since Marimar's family (a false name, like the rest of the witnesses in the report) has been living from one social services pension to another. They've lived with their three minor children and her husband since they were evicted from the room they had sublet from a married couple who were friends. Like them, Barcelona City Council's social services accommodate some 3,000 vulnerable people in tourist establishments. of which 1,300 are creatures. In principle, a maximum stay of six months is established, but the reality of the users and the housing market in the city makes it impossible to meet these deadlines.

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The executive council of the Government will appoint Josep Muñoz Luque as the new director of the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA) this Tuesday at its weekly meeting. replacement of the dismissed Isabel Carrasco, who has only been at the helm of the entity responsible for protecting minors who cannot live with their biological family for six months. Muñoz was until now the manager of Social Welfare Services at the Barcelona Provincial Council.

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