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Child-welfare services come under fire

Catalonia's child welfare services accused of withholding some pensions of infants and adolescents

The case of an aunt ques­tion­ing pen­sion pay­ments for three chil­dren or­phaned fol­low­ing an ac­ci­dent in which both par­ents died has brought to light an anom­aly which the Cata­lan om­buds­man's of­fice sees as being dis­crim­i­na­tory. The case in point has re­vealed that Cat­alo­nia's child-wel­fare ser­vices (DGAIA) has re­tained some of the pen­sion due to one of the chil­dren to pay for costs of su­per­vis­ing the child's wel­fare and while this is not a wide-spread prac­tise, the om­buds­man's of­fice has turned up other such cases. The de­part­ment be­lieves this prac­tise to be legal. The pay­outs are cal­cu­lated by Spain's so­cial se­cu­rity de­part­ment and the DGAIA re­ceives €1.6 mil­lion an­nu­ally while the costs total €1.1 mil­lion. In some cases, the chil­dren are cared for in wel­fare ser­vice homes or cen­tres but in the case of the afore­men­tioned chil­dren, for ex­am­ple, the three have lived with their aunt and grand­par­ents, how­ever, part of the pay­ment was kept by the DGAIA for “su­per­vi­sion”.

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