Barnahus open up to address other types of violence beyond sexual violence

BarcelonaThe Barnahus, the comprehensive care service for children who have suffered sexual assault, will be opened to other types of violence to prevent them from having to go to police stations, health centers, and courts to repeat what happened to them. The model, which already has 14 centers open throughout Catalonia, has represented a radical change in traditional practices because children are in a comfortable environment, safe spaces where police officers and legal professionals carry out all the tests that will be used in case of a trial, without the need for them to testify again. The announcement was made by Teresa Llorens, Secretary of Life Cycles and Citizenship of the Generalitat, who also announced that the figure of the child advocate will be created, a reference professional to care for children under guardianship who live in a center.

Precisely, the Barnahus are an example of positive practices highlighted by the new report from the Childhood Platform of Catalonia (PINCat) and the Third Sector Table, which analyzes the first five years of the LOPIVI, the state law on comprehensive protection for children and adolescents. The Barnahus, according to the study presented this Thursday in a debate moderated by the deputy director of ARA, Ignasi Aragay, have demonstrated a great capacity not only to care for sexually assaulted children but also to detect cases of violence that until now remained silent and caused "adults with damage," in the words of Pilar Polo, psychologist at the Vicky Bernadet Foundation. According to data from the Federation of Entities for the Care of Children and Adolescents (FEDAIA), this specialized network attended 2,897 cases in 2024, while the following year they closed with 3,735, meaning there was a 30% increase.

However, the positive results of Barnahus are not the norm in the deployment of LOPIVI, as in these five years many of the aspects contemplated in the norm have been left unfinished. The implementation has not been the same either throughout the country or in all areas: there are serious structural deficiencies due to lack of staff in the mental health system, where waiting lists are accumulating to access psychological or psychiatric therapies. Other deficits detected in the analysis are the lack of support for vulnerable families to promote prevention, and therefore, action is taken reactively when the situation has already worsened and children are at risk; the saturation of social services that can only attend to emergencies, or the ground to be covered in improving the specialized training of professionals or the coordination between involved services.

"Positive maternity and paternity must be implemented," especially to know how to respond to two aspects such as the use of networks and technology and sexuality, has emphasized Mireia Forner, psychologist at the Hospital Clínic and member of the working group for the modification of LOVIPI.

In the debate, Jofre Padullés, coordinator of the Barnahus commission of FEDAIA, has called for educational strategies focused on consent and power relations to be launched to counteract traditional masculinities that embrace an important segment of adolescents, while Xavi Nus, from the Pere Tarrés Foundation, has highlighted that the leisure world anticipated LOPIVI with the implementation of protocols to prevent sexual violence, but has also indicated that adults need to know how to "truly listen," as children often see them as role models to open up and explain what is happening to them.