What to expect when enrolling your child in a crèche? The quality of reception would be “very disparate” in these structures where the best and the worst rub shoulders, alarms the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) in a rapport published on Tuesday, which calls for far-reaching reforms to better prevent child abuse.
Alongside nurseries “of high quality, driven by in-depth pedagogical reflection”, there are also “very degraded quality establishments”, which can lead to “deficiencies in emotional security and in the awakening” of toddlers , underline the authors of this report.
Children deprived of a nap, force-fed…
The inspectors were commissioned by the government after the death of an 11-month-old baby in a private nursery in Lyon last June, a case in which an employee was indicted, suspected of having caused the child to ingest a caustic product. In concrete terms, the investigators visited 36 public and private establishments across France and distributed a questionnaire to which 5,275 directors, 12,545 crèche employees and 27,671 parents responded.
Many of the adults interviewed thus described situations akin to abuse, the authors point out, evoking children forgotten on the toilets, deprived of a nap for lack of sufficient beds, or on the contrary left in tears until let them fall asleep.
Other testimonies mention children who are not given anything to drink, “that way, we change diapers less”, who are left too long in their soiled diaper, who are humiliated or insulted (” you chouines for nothing”, “you smell bad”…). Others report cases of force-feeding children by pinching their noses to open their mouths, or even physically abusing them by pulling their hair or tying them to a radiator.
Faced with these findings, “all the recommendations” of this document will be taken into account, assured Tuesday the Minister of Solidarity, Jean-Christophe Combe, who wishes to “act quickly”. The minister is expected to announce measures in the spring, as part of the “public service for early childhood” promised by President Emmanuel Macron. This project has a quantitative dimension, with the necessary creation of more places, but also a qualitative dimension, underlined the entourage of Minister Jean-Christophe Combe.
A lack of attractiveness of the profession
For Igas, improving the quality of reception must go through a strengthening of controls, an increase in the rate of supervision and the level of qualification of professionals, but also by a mode of financing of establishments conditioned on quality objectives. .
The rapporteurs also underline the need to remedy the lack of attractiveness of early childhood professions, an “aggravating factor as much as a symptom” of the difficulties in welcoming children well.