The difficulties of the Generalitat to locate the stigmatized centers for minors under guardianship

The hard and bitter debate this week in Les Corts Valencianes as a result of a PP proposal against the construction of an intergenerational space for social care in the Benimàmet neighborhood has shown the stigma that still hangs over the centers for minors supervised by the Generalitat and the difficulties that the Public Administration has when it comes to building new resources to care for these children who need special protection due to various circumstances.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
14 February 2023 Tuesday 03:51
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The difficulties of the Generalitat to locate the stigmatized centers for minors under guardianship

The hard and bitter debate this week in Les Corts Valencianes as a result of a PP proposal against the construction of an intergenerational space for social care in the Benimàmet neighborhood has shown the stigma that still hangs over the centers for minors supervised by the Generalitat and the difficulties that the Public Administration has when it comes to building new resources to care for these children who need special protection due to various circumstances.

In the Valencian Community there are 2,209 minors in residential care (which has nothing to do with custodial centers for young people between the ages of 16 and 18 who have committed a crime) and who need a center to live.

After the impossibility of presenting in the plenary session of Les Corts a request for an investigation commission on Azud, the popular ones hesitated to rescue an old Proposition Not of Law (PNL) in which they requested the stoppage of this action in Benimàmet. In the debate, and after listening to all the parliamentary groups, it became quite clear that this project was not going to go ahead. And some parties, such as Vox, took the opportunity to once again link minors with immigration and crime.

From the Valencia City Council they confirm to La Vanguardia that it has been transferred to the Ministry of Equality and Inclusive Policies that on that site they had to respond to the historical claims of the residents regarding public endowments. Likewise, the same sources point out that they have committed to the department headed by Aitana Mas to send them alternative locations.

For their part, sources from the Ministry admit the stoppage since the consistory has not finished the project, but they do not hide their perplexity over the fact that a project that received the declaration of general interest and public interest by the Executive was renounced. Valencian in an agreement of December 2021 and that was approved by the Local Government Board.

In this sense, they regret that the framework of the right-wing parties that have fueled the demonstrations against this type of facility have also permeated the parties that now govern.

And it is that in the parliamentary debate it became quite clear that neither Compromís nor PSPV (especially the latter) are willing to go ahead with this project. The socialist deputy who intervened asked the neighbors - present in the guest gallery - not to worry that the performance was paralyzed, that it had been "rectified" and that her group supported her requests. She also accused the PP of trying to "make noise" before the elections.

The truth is that this noise seems to have had its effect before a new rectification of a consistory that, after the neighborhood protest, has backed down. There are only a few months left for elections that are presumed to be very tight and in Benimàmet there are almost 10,000 citizens with the right to vote.

The project to build a center for minors in Paterna did not go ahead either, where, after several scuffles between the mayor of the town, the socialist Juan Antonio Sagredo, and the then vice president and councilor for Inclusive Policies, Mónica Oltra (Compromís), the consistory ended not giving the permissions to run the installation. It was a tense debate between two parties that share the Government of the Generalitat and that denotes the difficulties that the administrations have to find locations for these necessary centers.

Inclusive Policies sources explain that the space designed in Benimàmet included a day center for the elderly, an intergenerational center and a center for young people. In fact, the Ministry had ceded part of the site to Health to comply with the demand to improve the health facilities in the area. They point out that in the project there was no socio-education center, those spaces where by court order minors between the ages of 16 and 18 who have committed some type of crime and have been deprived of liberty are taken. Of these centers there are only 9 in the Valencian Community.

In this line, from the Ministry they regret the lack of knowledge of the general public about how the system of protection of children and adolescents works. As of December 31, 2022, the number of children and adolescents in the protection system amounted to 4,061. These are, the same sources explain, minors who have been left without parents, who have arrived without relatives or who the social services have considered appropriate to separate from their parents (aggressions, neglect, school absenteeism...). For this reason, they explain, "these are boys and girls whose rights the Administration must protect."

These more than 4,000 minors are in different regimes according to their needs. There are 2,209 in residential foster care, 1,653 in family foster care (either in the extended family or in educational families) and 199 in foster care for adoption purposes. Likewise, the minors who are found by court order in socio-educational residences are only 316.