This training obligation cannot be solely aimed at persons holding the position of tutor.
According to their respective roles, persons in charge of workshops, cooks, “house mistresses”
and night warders need to receive the necessary training for relations with children in difficulty.
This is not a question of confusing different roles, but of helping the adults to share the same
approach to the minors catered for and to speak to them in a single voice. Nobody should enter
and stay in a CEF in order to work without having received the necessary training.
b/ There cannot be any tutors without an educational project.
It is incumbent upon the heads of each institution to elaborate a project concerning the
children catered for. This project needs to be composed of objectives and means.
The objectives are concerned with the contents of the children’s learning. The learning
itself concerns their behaviours, their social life, attitudes towards the offence and behaviours to
be promoted and achieved. The means concern the forms of individual and collective life and the
rules to be applied to the latter, in particular with regard to discipline and incentives, contact with
the exterior, and practical arrangements, belonging to the young offenders’ institutions or
accessible, which can facilitate fulfilment of the objectives.
Initially drafted by the heads of each facility, the project needs to be taken up by the staff,
and educational staff in particular. The latter need to enrich the project by bringing their
experience to it, so that they can then assimilate it. It should constitute the common cement of
their attitude towards the children, so that there is as little disagreement as possible with regard to
fundamentals concerning to the latter (while differences in expression thereof are on the contrary
welcome).
The project needs to be regularly revised, as experience is acquired, in close coordination
with the educational team, for example every two or three years, without these periods being
absolutely fixed. These amendments of course have to be compatible with the official texts
governing CEFs.
c/ There can be no education without formalisation.
The educational project should serve as a basis for the individual observations which need
to be included in the documents concerning each adolescent catered for (document on
individual measures for dealing with young offenders referred to as the DIPC / document
individuel de prise en charge), which are too often neglected.
For the purposes of mutual sharing, support and progress, professional practices should
be formalised in the various different accessible documents to be adapted according to the
institutions.
In one institution inspected, “behavioural files” were drafted by the management on the
basis of common reflection: the tasks were thus coordinated and made easier.
d/ There cannot be any education without consistency on the part of
adults.
Frequent meetings should enable coordination of responses to questions concerning young
people arising from their behaviour.
Agreement needs to be established with regard to the question raised, the conclusions to
be drawn therefrom and the response to be made. It is necessary to avoid confusion of children
due to divergent attitudes and different responses on the part of adults. The soundness of the
response also depends upon the consistency and lack of ambiguity thereof.
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