Marea Turquesa is the ASSOCIATION of fathers and mothers who claim to have been unfairly separated from their sons and daughters, created last year in the Spanish State. The Turquoise Euskadi Tide began last June and there are already 15 fathers and mothers who attend the appointment. We met with three mothers from Gipuzkoa. “You can now breathe peacefully, you have all the time in the world for you,” said the Maite Deputy Technician (fake name). “I don’t want all the time of the world for me, I want my children!” Maite has the 2-year-old son with a foster family and his 4-year-old daughter in a center since June, when she separated from her partner and was denounced by a neighbor when she was in a women's hostel, accusing her of rebuking her daughter with very ugly words. “And then they’ve been inflating and inflating, suggestions that have nothing to do with me, neither feet nor heads... ), they have even put in the report that when I was told no, that my daughter was not wearing clean hair (because she has traces)… They have put me in the reports as if I was a monster, but I have always focused on taking care of my children. For many years we've lived in the same neighborhood and I've never had any problems with anyone, my daughter has been to a good school since she was 2 years old, she has never missed food, clothing and resources, why don't they ask the kids? Look at you, it has nothing to do with the report that the psychiatrist of Osakidetza has made to me and the report of the psychologist who has chosen the Deputation.”

Arantxa Akizu and her partner voluntarily entered a detoxification center and, in the meantime, it was their family that removed their baby, performing the necessary procedures. Once out of the center, however, in the Council they were told that "in no case" the girl would return to them. He has been trying for three years to give negative in consumption analysis, to accumulate positive official reports and to ask for judgments, but in vain. However, it has not lost hope.

Susana doesn't have a fake name to be a mother: When she was pregnant, her partner and he went to social services hoping to get some kind of help, but the conclusion was very different. Susana's phrase is that of many who are in the same situation: “Damn day we decided to go to social services!” Five days after delivery, on the order of the Deputy, they took the child from the hospital, “I was accused of burning marijuana (one pot a day! ), that we did not have enough income, that when I was younger I was in a reception center, that I have been a woman who suffered a lot from mistreatment in a previous relationship and that my conflictive past does not allow me to lead a normal life ... I have been condemned for my past forever and I have had a hard past, yes, but how many would have ended up chained to a harmful life? I have gone ahead, I have always worked, except in the hairdresser, in the bar, and all that has not been valued. When you're already doomed it's hard to turn around, the baby is taken away just in case and then solved. Now, every month I run tests to show that I take nothing, my partner is working with a contract, I am studying in my pocket, we have a stable floor… and all those changes have not been taken into account by the Representative. What is more, we have called for a trial and the Member has ordered the judge to suspend it, taking into account our background. At least he who puts him in prison recovers his children when he leaves prison, for we do not have the right to do so.” Susana and her partner are on trial at the end of November, almost a year after they were born, their baby is removed.

“Because we have had a difficult life, don’t we deserve to be children? “They take advantage of the fact that we are people with few resources. We are no one for them, the last others, and the more vulnerable we are, the better we are prey.”

Social services, subcontracting and administration
are the Administration ' s decision-making bodies for the separation of sons and daughters from parents, but follow-up is done by working groups operating outside the administration and subcontracted companies, and the administration makes decisions on the basis of these reports. The Head of the Child and Adolescent Protection Service of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, Patxi Agiriano, wishes to make it clear that: “Separation is the last step, and before we tried to keep the family together in other interventions. In Gipuzkoa, at present, 1,117 children participate in family intervention programs and those with protective measures are 695”. He tells us that they use an “objective” method called the Instrument of Values: “This tool has been recently evaluated by the University of the Basque Country. These psychosocial evaluations compare the information provided by the different agents involved in the life of the child (school, Osakidetza, leisure activities, family...). All information contained in the reports should be checked and verified to ensure the quality, objectivity and accuracy of their decisions. Furthermore, when such a decision is taken, the road has often been long ahead, it has passed through the town hall and then through the deputies. If something is missing from our protection system, early action is lacking.” Agiriano stresses that all measures and evaluations are carried out in a collegiate manner and have a system of filters of three levels: in the first level, the proposal made by the contracted team must be analyzed in a collegiate manner within the organization itself; in the second place, the measure is reviewed by the foral professional and, in the third place, the commission analyzes “rigidly” the final proposal. “Finally, and after passing through these filters, the proposal is sent to Deputy Foral.”

We have asked a Donostian lawyer to work on these issues and he does not see it as clear: “I do not say that in most cases the intervention is not justified, it is clear that there are children at risk, but it is true that in many cases there is excessive intervention by the administration. The issue is difficult because it's not the only person making the decision, it's supposed to be teamwork, there's reports from each other, but I've seen very focused reports, which focus on some things and don't even collect things that they don't care about, that the explicit concealment of the information they can do for parents says a lot about the objectivity of some. The parents go to the social services in search of help, they are questioning them believing that they are talking, they start to upload and download reports, they also use information from the past against you, as if they had no right to reinsert themselves, and in the end they find the writing of the young graduate, without experience, judging with rigor the behavior of the parents, as if they were an expert in pedagogy.” According to Maite, in social services, trials are made very easily: “It has happened to me that they write me a report about me, about the words of the psychologist, the people in the hostel and third parties, who have never had me face to face. And it’s not by chance, it’s always the same people who do it, because I know that the social support that has allowed me to take my baby has done the same to many others.”

Why?
According to the lawyer interviewed, there are many companies and professionals working outside the administration, a lot of money moves, and sometimes it seems that some are interested in the machinery continuing to work, to justify their work: “When you subcontract public services to private companies, other interests may be interspersed.” “The reception centers are private and there is a lot of interest in all the places being filled,” explains journalist Consuelo García, in the research book The Mother of Social Services on the dimension of the theme she has published this year in the Spanish State. Agiriano denies us the risks of subcontracting: “Management may be subcontracted, but responsibility is always public. That is why our role is to ensure that the work is carried out with effective and consistent criteria and that there are quality controls for it.”

Is the Administration the one to decide or the judge?In some European countries, the intervention of minors must
be ordered by the judge, but in the Spanish State the competence is exclusive to the administration and does not require any judicial authorization. “Just as parents recently divorced and there is a judgment that specifies child care, the administration can come and make another decision with peace of mind,” says the attorney.

It is precisely for Patxi Agiriano that the ideal is that the competence be of the administration and not of justice: “The child protection system, fortunately, is in the social services and guarantees intervention at all levels, including the detection of possible situations of helplessness, under the responsibility of professionals with adequate training in education and psychology, and guarantees a faster intervention, in the face of the suspicion that the decisions that will affect the lives of children would be delayed if the protection system were judicialized”.

However, the lawyer sees major shortcomings in this procedure: “In other countries, they give you a hearing before you make the administrative decision, the possibility of submitting claims… and that is a constitutional principle, a right to defence. Here you are left with the right to defense for later: first they execute it, they take it and then you will see whether you turn or not. This gives rise to great helplessness. On the one hand, because many have no resources or strength to resort to; shame and fear are interspersed, or feel guilty for any of the administration’s arguments, and incorporate the dynamics of administration, negotiate the visiting hours, practice therapy… On the other hand, if it is decided to resort, for when the court reacts and for when the court intervenes, because it passes at least a year”.

In the lawyer’s words, the administration is wrong in bringing the appeal, “because it believes you have not accepted the treatment, you have admitted its truth, you have agreed to change your life.” The lawyer says that although there is a good psychosocial group in the courts, the administration has a lot of strength, that the reports submitted by his team have a lot of weight and that many arguments are subjective. The result is that parents almost never win. For the mothers interviewed, it is a reflection of the impunity and the Administration's goal, while for Agiriano it means that the Administration has reason. He gave us the data. In 2016, 46 appeals were filed in the Family Court, all of which were dismissed.

A decision without return?The mothers
highlight another criticism, also included in the testimonies of the beginning of the article: that despite turning around the inadequate postures that accuse them, even if corrected, they do not recover their children. “In other countries, they can take the child away, but they strive to put in place means for parents to deal with the problems they have so that they can then recover it. Here, however, the starting point is the final withdrawal of the child instead of helping the family, and then it is the family that has to make the efforts to recover it”, Arantxa Akizu laments.

It states that this is not the case, that there is continuous monitoring and evaluation and that interventions can be reoriented at all times: “Much work is done to bring the family together at the beginning, or to regroup the family afterwards. But thinking that poverty or drug addiction are elements of protective measures is not right. They are indicators to keep in mind, yes, but the key is always whether these parents are able to care for children.”

In spite of this, the data indicate that what has initially been called “provisional” is usually converted into “definitive” and that the child can end up adopting foster families, far from the biological parents (the host families receive 600 euros per month per child in Gipuzkoa).

Is it enough an hour a week?For an
hour or an hour and a half it is common for parents to have time to be with their children separated, under the supervision of a technician. We ask the Head of the Child Protection Service if it is enough time: “With each child, an analysis is made of the needs of the relationship with the family, and depending on these needs and the time it has, a visiting regime is organized with the parents. It must be taken into account that these parents have serious problems and have taken the step of separating them because they have been harmed and do not let the child grow in a healthy way.”

Susana was removed five days after birth: “I don’t think the son knows us, we’re two strangers to him who love him one hour a week. The first words, the first steps -- you'll take them with the other family, and that's tremendously painful. In addition, when deciding whether they will return us later, the criterion with which the child is most attached is important, but with whom, if we only see an hour and a half a week?”

Maite speaks every night by phone with her 4-year-old daughter who is in a center: “She cries, she tells me over and over again that she wants to come back with me.” The 2-year-old son is with a foster family and sees an hour a week. “Yesterday I hit myself. I know that the host family hasn’t done it with bad intent, but on the child’s birthday they made a collage with the photos of the celebration and when my son taught me a great sadness came in, because I have barely been able to celebrate the birthday with him, and I think I can also offer it.”

Fear and shame
are common feelings between these fathers and mothers. “You don’t count on something you’re going, people always think, ‘you’ve done something,’ and in the end you isolate yourself.” They have told us that they feel constantly judged and despised, “as women and as mothers”. We've been told about powerlessness, humiliation, garbage, but they're not willing to give up. “Let people like us see that they are not alone, that we will fight together.” We have been asked to add contact: mareaturquesaeuskadi@gmail.com. “The collective gives us hope, we strengthen ourselves together, if we are more and more people before the judge, we will perhaps be able to investigate the functioning and the way we work, review each case and dismiss all those who have acted incorrectly.”