The children of Quebec are not pampered. Many of them face many toxic barriers and stressors on a daily basis, often repeatedly. Their resilience may be good, but there comes a time when they can no longer bear the consequences of political and social issues that harm their development and well-being. They go from pain to pain and from anger to anger, when they don’t just give up.
The drama that is currently playing out before our eyes, in all sectors that concern them, feeds them a cocktail of anxiety, disappointment and disengagement. Their rights are repeatedly neglected and violated, and they end up falling into the proverbial “crack”.
Remember our shock at the sight of this young migrant child found dead on a beach a few years ago. Think back to the little girl from Granby, who died from neglect and mistreatment. Our indignation was total. Everyone around the world swears that such violence should never happen. But at the moment, children have died in the thousands in the multiple conflicts that are shaking the world and the great displacements. And we don’t really care.
There are also thousands of neglected and abused children in Quebec, and they are just as easily forgotten. Everything happens as if our capacity to react and to be outraged fell under the influence of inertia in the face of the scourges which affect our children. It’s hard to understand!
In health, social services and education, nothing is going well. No more than with regard to access to justice and social equity. Access to medical care is gradually deteriorating. Long waits, a shortage of doctors and nurses and a lack of prevention are part of parents’ daily lives while exasperating most of us. Social services are in crisis, both in terms of child protection and the psychosocial follow-up necessary for children in difficulty and who have experienced complex trauma.
In education, staff shortages, dilapidated schools and breakdowns in services as strikes directly undermine the development and safety of children. There is little discussion about them, which suggests that these are items that do not seem to be very high on the priority scale.
Access to justice is also in crisis. We lack judges, the sentencing periods for abusers and violent people are long, we do not listen to the words of children: everything combines to make it a system without a strong basis like a legal “fast food” . As for social equity (housing problems, food access and difficult social support), its absence creates a separate category of children who are increasingly isolated with multiple problems difficult to resolve.
Awareness of the deterioration of care and services offered to children is blatant. Solutions exist, but they require community commitment on the one hand and political courage on the other. Which, we will agree, is not the norm these days. Numerous commissions and several theoretical debates were held, but almost nothing concrete came out of them to really transform the large systems which naturally are inclined to protect their assets above all else.
Let us start by applying the International Convention on the Rights of the Child as a working basis to ensure a response consistent with the global needs of children and to eliminate toxic environments that constantly threaten their integrity and potential.
Let us establish total respect for children and listening to their words as essential principles for the success of all initiatives that concern them. Let’s create a common language and knowledge on best practices for a happy and healthy childhood.
It is urgent to implement transdisciplinary practices in children’s living environments with an emphasis on children in situations of great vulnerability. The example of community social pediatrics practice should inspire all those who want to make a difference for children.
In short, what is needed is to create, in their neighborhood, circles of protection, prevention and a healthy environment for the benefit of all children.