Waiting lists to enter the Barnahus due to lack of staff

BarcelonaThe Barnahus, the comprehensive services that the Generalitat (Catalan Government) launched for minor victims of sexual violence, are severely understaffed. Of the twenty-six professionals working in the fourteen homes across Catalonia, only six remain in their positions, while the remaining positions are either vacant or the new staff has not yet been trained. This situation is causing delays in child care and an overload of work for the professionals who remain.

This situation is the result of stabilization and the transfer competition, two processes that the Generalitat (Catalan Government) has had to promote in recent years to reduce the number of interim and temporary staff and, consequently, increase the number of civil servants. The shifting of workers from one department to another has left some services with staff at a disadvantage, awaiting the resolution of appeals and the reappointment of vacant positions. The problem is that Barnahus is a service that treats very sensitive users, who arrive after suffering sexual abuse of all kinds, including rape. And the new workers who have won the position have no training in this regard because anyone in the force with the required category was eligible.

Once the two processes were closed, there was an uproar in this service. Only six of the twenty-six Barnahus strategy technicians (known by the acronym TEB) who were hired on an interim basis have kept their jobs because they won the position. However, eleven of these positions have remained vacant and are awaiting filling through candidates registered on the Generalitat's platform for new hires, and the remaining eight are occupied by civil servants from other services and departments who "need training," according to the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion, to which the Barnahu homes depend.

From the pilot plan to fourteen homes

In 2020, the department opened the first Barnahus in Tarragona as a pilot project, and starting in 2023, it has been creating new ones throughout Catalonia. This model originated in Finland and can be translated literally as "children's home." It is characterized by placing minors and families at the center of care, allowing professionals to travel to the service facilities for diagnosis and treatment.

Without officials trained in sexual violence in childhood, the department hired professionals and required them to have resumes and experience in psychology, social work, criminology, or pedagogy; to have the ACTIC certificate, which accredits skills in information and communication technologies; and to have knowledge of how the child protection system works. "[The department] wanted excellence, dedicated a large budget, offered us hours of training, asked for commitment, and now, for nothing, to have civil servants who have never seen a child come and be scared of the cases they see," workers who have been removed from the workforce and others who remain complain to ARA. "It's not a tantrum, but it feels bad to see this mistreatment within the teams, which were already established," they say.

The TEBs are responsible for receiving cases of possible sexual abuse derived from health services, schools, and the police. They assess whether a case should be transferred to a Barnahus and, from there, coordinate with other departments of the Generalitat (Mossos d'Esquadra, Health, Education), as well as with the Public Prosecutor's Office to ensure comprehensive care in a safe space. With a half-staff, they complain that the TEBs must take on the agendas of several hospitals. The consequences, they say, are already being felt. By not providing the necessary scope to analyze the files, referral times are extended "up to three months," and therefore, it is taking longer than expected to develop a personalized intervention plan for each child.

Children's Corps

TEB positions are an exception at the DGPPIA, the Directorate General for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents, because they were created as A22 and not A21. The intention was to recognize the work of these technicians who do not follow strict civil service schedules and deal with very emotionally difficult cases. "When they hired us, we knew it could happen. They didn't deceive us, and we knew we were temporary workers who could jump, but it's detrimental to the service," the workers explain.

The Barnahus are one of the initiatives that all the counselors who have passed through Social Rights have embraced, and even the current head, Mònica Martínez Bravo, has expressed a willingness to open new ones. The Government has allocated more than seven million euros to deploy the model that, according to the data, works for bring to light sexual violence against children.

Experts on gender-based violence suggest that a good solution to avoid these staffing gaps, while waiting for new staff to be minimally trained, is to create a civil service corps for children, as is the case with the Mossos d'Esquadra, health workers, or teachers, which have exclusive vacancies for career civil servants without any prior experience.