PAROLES DE RUE

Subject: living and working in the street implies a different real life experience of space and time for the children, but also for the social workers. However, these essential aspects are hardly ever taken into consideration by the political authorities.

Brazil

Roberto dos Santos gives evidence of the particularly difficult life endured by the children and young people in Brazil.

The reasons why the young people end up in the street are multiple: deplorable economic conditions, shantytowns, drug and arms-trafficking, abusive interventions by the police, but also the absence of family control over the children’s activities and inter-familial violence. The young people leave their families initially to bring back money and to get away from the violence. Life in the street gives them the chance to get to know other children and to construct new values together.

Once they are in the street, they experience a new use of space and time.

The streets are divided into different territories, especially in the large cities, based on the model of trafficking practices. The children who are living in the street must respect these territories. They live in small groups without worrying about tomorrow and they follow the rules set by the older boys. Some invent a new identity. The most important thing is to respect the values and rules of the group.

Freedom has a strong symbolic value: they have no programme, no schedule; they only follow their wishes. They mostly live during the night, as it is quieter and they feel more secure. But there are also power conflicts; the leaders are those who lead the game.
The solidarity with the group, the identification of the wishes particular to the members of the group are so strong that it makes it very difficult to intervene in this kind of living structure. The children do not accept to get involved in a relation with a social worker. A specific methodology is needed to set foot inside these groups.

Belgium

Christian Lassaux is working for a “youth support service in an open environment” (AMO), a street work organisation essentially aiming at prevention.

The notion of making the street a more sociable place is essential. The street is a privileged public place for social intervention. The people, who are in the streets, are there for very different reasons - ranging from playing games to homelessness. The fields of intervention of social work are therefore quite numerous. All situations are not cases of exclusion.

For a young person the street, just like the family and the school, is also a place for socializing. For Mr Lassaux, it is important for the adolescent to have the possibility to develop him/herself outside these two regulated spaces (family and school). Consequently, the street is the privileged place for actions of general prevention. In the French-speaking Community of Belgium, the object of prevention is to avoid invisible violence (stigmatisation, contempt, interfamilial violence, diverse forms of discriminations, etc) to multiply, or to become recurrent, for instance by bursting into visible and reprehensive violence (e.g. drugs, theft, aggressions, etc.)

The challenge therefore is to promote dialogue in order to replace the diverse forms of violence or brutal revolt by negotiation. It is indeed a matter of restoring the status of each individual as a citizen.

	Chr. Lassaux - "Un lieu d'intervention sociale" (1'11'')
	840 Ko	1,5 Mo	d

Uruguay

Mrs Simeone, originally from Belgium, has been working in Uruguay for many years.

Uruguay, just like Argentina, is facing a dramatic economic situation. 50% of the children are living under the poverty threshold, half of which are between 0 and 11 years old. 40.000 people have illegally left the country this year.

When the children go to school, it is only in order to eat. They are living in the street because the minimum living space does not exist in the shantytowns. Nevertheless, they keep in touch with their families, contrary to what happens usually in Argentina or Brazil. The street children sell all kinds of things; they earn an average of 50 Euro per month.

The families come from either the countryside or the working-class areas, which they had to leave after loosing their jobs. You can often meet a third generation of children born in the shantytown, who do not have any knowledge about their family’s history. Social work consists of giving these children back their self-esteem, by helping them to re-appropriate their rhythm, their space and their history.

Portugal

For Helder Luis Santos, the notion of time and rhythm is essential in the street. He himself is originally from the countryside, and was used to a particular rhythm, while everybody would like him to adopt a different one.

We are living simultaneously in different times: a social time, a technological time, a personal time, a political time - with huge discordance between them. A presidential mandate is limited in time. As a social worker, one is subjected to the limitations of political time for the realisation of one’s projects. This political time does not allow visiting the people, to share, to establish trust little by little.

The question therefore is: how to find the possibility, as a social worker and as a citizen, to reconcile the demands of these different times?

Conclusions

Restoring self-esteem

The street worker must help to restore the self-esteem of the children, to show the children that they have qualities, which enabled them to survive or adapt, even if these qualities are not valued by society. The force of the street is minimised, devalued, and yet it carries values of solidarity, freedom, fidelity, and resourcefulness. How can one transform what happens in the street into claims of a political nature? It is the role of the street worker in his function as a spokesperson.

The role of the street worker is not to get the children out of the street at all costs, to get them out of one social space, in order to put them into another. There is a great diversity of cases of lives in the street. One should be able to perceive them differently. Some children were born in the street; it is their social space, which one should value. It is a whole process of guidance and of respect.

A long- term approach

The time the children spend in the street becomes significant in connection with their vision of the world. In order to better comprehend the point of view of the children the street worker should also spend time in the street without however becoming part of it.

In terms of prevention, one should not only work with the young person, but also on the environment. The street worker should act as a bridge in both directions, and make sure that he is not himself the one to remove this bridge. For example, by solely conveying the misery of street children, without giving evidence of their strength, the street worker ratifies the dominant vision. In this profession, there is not enough space for reflection or critical detachment; the social worker tends to be in the action-mode and rarely finds time for reflection.

The comparison of practices should make it possible to establish a process promoting diversity, and to move away from a global methodology, which strengthens the existing system. Social policies are changing; street workers are here to stay.

	G. Leblanc - "Deux constats" (0'36'')
	380 ko	700 Ko	d

	G. Leblanc - "Deux recommandations" (0'24'')
	284 ko	564 Mo	d

	G. Leblanc - "Une expérience intense" (0'27'')
	277 ko	517 Mo	d