On February 12th, 2007, the European Council adopted the decision n°2007/125/JAI establishing the programme "Prevention of and Fight against Crime" as part of the general programme "Security and Safeguarding Liberties".
Some of the objectives of the programme are the following :
- To promote and develop best practices for the protection and support of victims and witnesses of crimes.
- To establish in cities a police and judicial cooperation with the social services, schools and hospitals in order to strengthen the mechanisms of protection of victims.
- To promote exchanges between law enforcement officials, training, and seminars; to share knowledge and/or best practices aimed to increase mutual confidence; to strengthen criminal investigations and/or improve policy standards.
The Child's Voice, due to all the work done before and to share its knowledge on subject of maltreated children and the collection of the child's evidence and his taking care, wants to propose a new European project, “TRAIN TOGETHER – SE FORMER ENSEMBLE”, on the training of professionals working close to minors victims.
The Child's Voice is a Federative Association ceated on the July 20th, 1981, whose aim is "To listen and defend any child in distress in France and all around the world".
Through its 76 associations, the Child's Voice has the means of :
- Act as spokesperson for children in France and worldwide;
- Defend the dignity and integrity of the child, especially within his family;
- Represent the interests of child victims;
- Act as platform of exchange and coordination for the protection and defence of children;
- Develop and submit propositions for the application of the International Convention of the Child's Rights, International treaties and National Legislation.
- Act as an open place for dialogue and partnership for member associations;
- Initiate programmes;
- Act as an information and documentation centre by setting up a database.
- Act as an intermediary, when necessary, between the member associations and the Public Authorities.
The Child's Voice is also :
- Member of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights since 1986 and copresident of the Subcommission of Children Rights (link with the National Insitutions of other European countries).
- Member of the GIPEM - Groupe d'Intérêt Public Enfance Maltraitée (Groupe of Public Interest for Maltreated Children). National Green Number is 119.
- Partner of the National Observatory on childhood in relation with the European Observatory.
- Coordinator of the programme Daphne, REACT TOGETHER, with the financial support of the European Commission.
- Partner in the programme called Child Focus.
- Coordinator of the programme called AGIS, with the financial support of the European Commission.
- Coordinatior of many of the Leonardo Da Vinci programmes.
On the real concern of the application of the law of June 17th, 1998, the Child's Voice initiated and supported the creation of the Medical Judicial Units in a hospital environment.
The aim of these Medical Judicial Units is to take into consideration the child's suffering on the medical, psychological, and social fields by looking to the needs of the interview and/or pre-trial investigation, whose objective is the manifestation of the truth.
The respect to the complementarity of the skills preserves the role of each professional inside these Units. These professionals are magistrates, pedopsychiatrists and psychologists, police officers, doctors, social services, and the associations for childhood protection and victims' assistance.
These professionals engage themselves with the service for children in a single place for a global taking care (unity of place, time, and action).
In relation to this thought, the AGIS programme 2005-2007, which had as objective "The situation analysis of the good practices in the field of the hearing of child victims of maltreatment in order to establish a European cooperation between the police and the legal system", coordinated by the Child's Voice, put in evidence an important gap: the lack of specific training for all professionals working on the follow up and take in charge of these children in the majority of the partner countries.
This is the reason why the Child's Voice wish to go further by proposing this project, which has for aim the realisation of a programme for common training that will prepare professionals to the specific needs of child victims, who are not a witnesses as others.
PREPARATION
Strong due to its experience with the Medical Judicial Units in a hospital environment for child victims in France, to its multidisciplinary work and with the partners of the AGIS programme, the Child's Voice, wishes to define the content of a real common and specific training for professionals with the different partner countries. Its practices enables it to propose targeted and multidisciplinary trainings allowing to each professional to better learn about the suffering of a child victim according to his role.
The multidisciplinary training allows professionals having different skills to discover their role and their complementarity, as well as to better answer to the needs of a suffering child. This training should avoid the confusion of roles and competences. The police officer should not play the role of the doctor, him the magistrate, and so on...
This project will also allow
the decompartmentalization of competences to lead professionals of different countries to work together with the aim of withdrawing the best existing practices concerning the training of professionals who work close to children, victims of sexual violence and to release fundamental criteria.
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