At first glance, the residence looks like all the other mansions on the street: a large red brick facade, large windows, a wooden carriage entrance. Located on the border of the Belgian municipalities of Péruwelz and Bonsecours, the Val de Verne center has no signage allowing you to guess that behind its walls, several dozen minors with intellectual disabilities live together, accompanied by a team of educators, psychologists and paramedics. A choice made by the Cerfontaine Center, the parent company located a few hundred meters away. “You will never see a logo on our vans or our living spaces, so as not to further stigmatize our residents,” explains Tiziana Daga, educational director of the center. Here, young minors are cared for in “life groups” of 20 to 25 people depending on their pathologies, in six different residences distributed in several Belgian municipalities – all close to the French border.
Among the 150 children with disabilities welcomed at Cerfontaine, “almost all” are French, according to management. And “two thirds” are followed by Child Welfare (ASE), which directed them towards Belgium due to a lack of places available in similar structures in France. These young French people, said to be “double vulnerable” – both dependent on the ASE and requiring medico-social care – were sent back to the center through several agreements: a first signed between the establishment and the Regional Health Agency (ARS) of Hauts-de-France, agreed for 55 young people, and others signed directly with the ASE of different French departments, allowing the reception of 37 children from the North, 5 from Pas-de-Calais, 30 from Seine-Saint-Denis… “Over time, the requests came from further and further away. We thus worked with children oriented by the ASE of the Somme, the Ardennes, Oise, Corsica or Morbihan”, says Tiziana Daga.
If each profile is different, the socio-medical journey of these young people often has in common a “chaotic” follow-up, marked by a lack of care in France, coupled with traumatic personal experiences. “They are emotionally deficient, have experienced situations of mistreatment, abuse, incest, have more or less flirted with petty delinquency or prostitution,” describes the educational director of Cerfontaine, referring to children harmed by lack of continuity of care. Affected by multiple pathologies, these minors have most of the time been tossed around different institutes or hospital departments, with a late diagnosis – when there is one. “We are often the last solution for these young people, who do not fit into the boxes predetermined by French establishments, or quite simply who have not found a lasting place there,” summarizes Tiziana Daga.
Lack of transparency
In Belgium, Cerfontaine is far from being the only center to collaborate with the French ASE: at the Courtil medical-pedagogical institute, which welcomes 250 young people in the town of Tournai, director Dominique Holvoet indicates for example that “60 %” of these residents are French minors “accompanied in one way or another by the ASE”. Questioned on the subject, the ARS Hauts-de-France, responsible for these “partnerships” with Belgium, indicates that 19 Walloon establishments welcomed at the end of 2023 no less than 432 young French people with disabilities and covered by social assistance. childhood. This figure, which only counts children referred by the ARS, only covers part of the reality. Each French department can in fact enter into specific agreements with Belgian establishments, for example to direct children with disabilities but who have not yet obtained disability recognition from the Departmental Houses for Disabled People (MDPH), a precious gateway to benefit from support in a specialized structure.
The Nord department thus indicates to L’Express that it has directly referred 213 children protected by the ASE to Belgium, in addition to the 137 already sent by the ARS – for a total of 350 children. Seine-Saint-Denis specifies, for its part, that this situation concerns “forty children” in the department, all oriented by the ARS… While each territory has its own figures, and some do not communicate them not – Essonne or Pas-de-Calais, for example, did not wish to respond to our requests on the subject -, there is no overall count of the number of ASE children with disabilities sent in Belgium. According to our cross-checks, there are at least 680. Contacted, the Walloon Agency for Quality Life (AVIQ), the Belgian equivalent of the ARS, specifies that it does not have such data either.
In a report delivered in September 2024, the Court of Auditors regrets this lack of transparency regarding the counting of these children, and is concerned about possible dysfunctions in the financing of their care in Belgium. “All children present in Wallonia entrusted to the ASE and with guidance from the MDPH must be covered by the corresponding health insurance envelope, otherwise there will be a breach of equality between children with the same recognition of their disability”, thus recalls the Court, requesting that a “census of these children be carried out and that the support for their stay be regularized”.
A “saturated” system in France
This phenomenon, far from being unprecedented – the Cerfontaine and Courtil centers both tell L’Express that they have been welcoming French children from ASE “for years” – symbolizes the strong difficulties of the departments in properly welcoming the children they are responsible, particularly when they have disabilities or behavioral problems. “We have been warning about the situation for a very long time: the number of children with double vulnerability is only increasing, and the ASE is not set up to accommodate them,” regrets Pauline de la Losa, disability manager within the National convention of child protection associations.
In June 2024, a study jointly carried out by its association and UNAPEI, a network of associations representing the interests of people with a neurodevelopmental disorder, recalled that a quarter of children accompanied by child protection were “doubly vulnerable” – a figure which reaches 45% of minors accommodated in living and reception facilities, 29% of those accommodated in special children’s homes, and 32.7% of those accommodated in foster families. At the same time, a glaring lack of places in specialized structures, training and staff makes it impossible to take care of them properly. “Professionals find themselves with children presenting disorders for which they are not trained. The result is a lack of project for the child, or multiple projects where clear, specific and supervised support is needed,” notes Pauline de Losa.
On the ground, this bitter observation is widely shared by elected officials in charge of disability. “The system is saturated: we sometimes find ourselves without answers, with cobbled together care, for example with daytime reception but not at night. We risk becoming abusive,” admits Audrey Tonnerre, vice-president of the department, bluntly. of the North in charge of Children, Families and Youth. Same assessment for Myriam Bouali, director of Children and Families at the Departmental Council of Seine-Saint-Denis, who evokes “an under-calibration of the medico-social offer for children” in her territory and a “chronic delay” on the subject, that the various initiatives carried out in recent years no longer make it possible to fill the gap.
“Serious breaches”
While Belgium is located approximately 2.5 hours by car from her department, Myriam Bouali ensures that these children continue to be followed legally and socially in France, and maintain a link with their family through occasional visits from relatives in Belgium, or supervised returns to the child’s home.
To guarantee a decent reception of young French people from the ASE in Belgian structures, the ARS Hauts-de-France also reminds that the framework agreement signed on December 21, 2011 by the French and Walloon governments provides for the implementation of a joint inspection of the two countries in these structures. “An annual program is decided between the ARS Hauts-de-France and the AVIQ, but it may also be decided to carry out unscheduled inspections during the year depending on the reports received,” specifies the organization.
In its report last September, the Court of Auditors warned of “serious failings” noted over the last ten years in several Belgian establishments, citing “physical or verbal mistreatment, deprivation of food as punishment, defects in care or supervision of spoiled foodstuffs […]or even negligence in the distribution of medicines”. According to AVIQ spokesperson Lara Kotlar, the establishments concerned would now be placed “under constant surveillance”, and would have benefited from “concrete action plans” in order to avoid any mistreatment.
Despite this feedback, the situation seriously raises the hackles of MP Isabelle Santiago, rapporteur for the Commission of Inquiry into shortcomings in public policies related to child protection. “We have to ask ourselves why these children are sent to Belgium, and what that says about the capacity of the State to protect them on our territory,” she tackles, before the start of a series of visits scheduled in Belgium as part of its commission of inquiry, scheduled for the end of January 2025.
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