"My daughter has become a child again": the long road to not losing custody

BarcelonaO. (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.

O.'s life changed dramatically when her daughter was born. The psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her partner also turned into physical violence. Little by little, she became isolated until she lost contact with her own family and lost her job. After daring to file for divorce, her ex-partner left her ruined: financially, emotionally, and physically. The man's constant threats of legal action devastated her mentally.

That entire violent environment had a profound impact not only on her, but also on her relationship with her daughter and her way of raising her, to the point where the situation became overwhelming. Nerves and insecurity took over whenever she had to deal with the girl. "I reached a point where I didn't know if what I was doing was right or wrong because I didn't see any progress in her behavior," explains O.

Participating in the pilot project was a turning point for the family. The nine months of weekly attendance at the project professionals' interventions have had a great impact on O's daughter. "She's not the same anymore," although she has good and bad days, but "she's learning to manage her emotions better and has left that anger behind. She's gone back to being a seven-year-old girl," O says with satisfaction.

The girl is one of the 19,688 minors who have a case open through the child protection system of the DGPPIA, but are part of the 32% who do not have any institutional protection measures and live at home with their parents. Faced with the risk of the family situation becoming more complicated, the psychologist at the CAP, who was only treating the mother, referred them to the Casal's pilot project as a preventative measure to improve both of their emotional management and to obtain educational tools for the O.

The project's philosophy aims to demonstrate the new direction taken by the management of the DGAIA, now DGPPIA, the preventative path that must be taken with minors to avoid issuing more drastic measures. From the Casal, they claim that the best way to defend child protection is "to invest in services that truly provide prevention with children and families," explains Pau Dachs, head of communications at the Casal dels Infants. After these months, the Whanau team is confident in the positive results obtained during the pilot phase with the small sample and hopes it can be carried out again in September. They argue that proactive, intensive, and personalized prevention is the best way to avoid the withdrawal of guardianship from minors in vulnerable contexts.

"The institutionalization of children profoundly affects the construction of their identity. Furthermore, it is a fundamental right of minors to grow up alongside their parents. Therefore, our work focuses on providing all parties with the necessary tools to make this possible," says Mas. Whanau aims to demonstrate that in a system collapsed by family fractures, like that of the O., timely interventions can be made before a girl's childhood is lost forever.