Almost 14000 children in Spain are living in institutions. The new national Child Protection Law project aims to reduce this figure by making adoption processes easier and accelerating the setting up of new measures to better protect children.
The main objective is to move from institutional care to family-based care, committing to the “best interest of the child” principle mentioned in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (signed by Spain ion 1990).
The law, which has been sent to the Spanish parliament to start the process for discussion and approval, received comments from Spanish Alliance’s coordinator the Spanish National Committee for UNICEF and was supported by other members of the Alliance (Red Cross, SOS Children’s Villages, Save the Children…).
The Spanish law project is closely linked with the European Commission Recommendation ‘Investing in Children – Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage’, and therefore with EU Alliance’s mission and objectives. According to Article 18 of the law, “poverty of the parents or guardians can not be the only circumstance to declare the situation of neglect. And in no case will separate a child from his parents because of a disability of the minor, from both parents or one.”
This links to Recommendation’s proposal to “Ensure that poverty is never the only justification for removing a child from parental care; aim at enabling children to remain in or return to the care of their parents by, for example, tackling the family’s material deprivation.”
Spanish Child Protection Law project available here (only in Spanish)