APPLICATION OF THE FRIENDLY VERSIONS OF THE UN GUIDELINES WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF CHILDREN AND OPERATORS

This work stage, led by Federico Kapustiansky and Miguel Sorbello, consisted of four workshops using the friendly versions of the UN Guidelines for Operators. Over 80 persons took part in the activities, coming from diverse areas of the childcare system, such as the Office of Rights Protection (OPD), Specialised Foster Families (FAE), operators from children's institutions, and supervisors of SENAME's programmes. It is important to highlight the participation of representatives from the Valparaíso region, who have an interesting background in the reform of their own practices. The workshops focused on promoting reflection on the experiences of each professional, in order to subsequently find the relations and connections between said experiences and the guidelines stated in the friendly versions.

In addition to the workshops with operators, three workshops with children aged between 12 and 18 were carried out. The first of them included the participation of 17 young people from SOS Children's Villages, Hogares Evangélicos de Chile Foundation and Posada del Niño. The focal points of debate were the lack of knowledge as to the reasons behind the separation of children from their families and the problems caused by the children's long stays at institutions. The latter issue also arose in another workshop with adolescents, in which they expressed their thoughts and reflections in relation to their experiences of deprivation of liberty, for instance, the daily disconnection and lack of communication between them and their families of origin and the discrimination they endure at school because they do not live in a family. Another workshop had the participation of 20 children living in foster families. In this case, the children's attention while reading the friendly versions focused in differentiating family-based from institutional care; they underlined the advantages provided by family-based care with regard to the guarantee of rights, the contact and communication with their families of origin, the progressive autonomy, and the construction of spaces for dialogue, among other matters.

Meetings with decision-makers, debates with specialists, and the telling of experiences by operators and young people were the focal points of these two activities of the Pilot Test that is being conducted in Chile, a highly demanding initiative led by RELAF, UNICEF and SENAME, with the aim of being replicated throughout the region.