The end of the criticized SENAME and the transition to a new institutional framework has been far from offering better protection to children and adolescents in the care of the Chilean State. National and international studies confirm a persistent violation of rights, which the author of the following column for CIPER describes as part of a negligent approach to public policy and the law that has been going on for a century: “A lot more is required than a discourse guaranteeing the rights of the child and the promise of great changes. […] That the State of Chile is indebted to children, there is no doubt; and it is precisely the State that must provide a solution, which can hardly be through persevering in a trajectory based on institutional mechanisms of financing, supervision, and treatment with little participation of public institutions and under the dynamics of the market.
hFour years ago, good news gave us hope regarding the long-awaited reform of policies aimed at children in Chile, particularly in the area of specialized protection. Ad of then President Sebastián Piñera on the end of SENAME opened a new legal and institutional order for children and adolescents (NNA) in the care of the State: Law 21,302 (2021) created the National Service for Specialized Protection of Children and Adolescents, now in charge of the Ministry of Social Development (no longer the Ministry of Justice), and, a year later, the Law 21,430 on Guarantees and Comprehensive Protection of Children and Adolescents came to culminate the reforms that adapted the country’s legislation to the Children’s rights convention.
However, to Shortly thereafter we find ourselves in the middle of a notorious discrepancy between public discourses and institutional practices. Once again, various voices have warned about the serious problems in the implementation of the service wrongly called (until now) “Better Childhood”. What has been certified in recent years about violated childhood in Chile by national organizations such as the Ombudsman for Children (2024), INDH, the Human Rights Center-UDP (2023), among others; and international ones, such as the Inter-American Court and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (2022) are certainly alarming data. Among others, these include: institutionalization of children and adolescents in mass homes for reasons related to the exclusion and socioeconomic segregation of their families; waiting lists in outpatient and residential programs; overcrowded state-run residences; deterioration of residences in terms of infrastructure and care conditions; lack of coordination with other existing social services and programs to comprehensively address the development and social integration of the child, mainly in the area of mental health; widespread violence in all its forms; and even complaints of sexual exploitation of girls in state care [ver, además, notas previas sobre el tema en CIPER].
It is certainly worrying in terms of public policy that shortly after the implementation phase of a new institutionality and its care programs has begun, there is already talk of a crisis. But it is even more alarming when it comes to a policy that is marked by a long and conflictive history or, better said, by a permanent crisis in the way in which the State has assumed the protection of the most vulnerable children. Apparently, we are facing a protection system that has failed to learn from the mistakes of the past, repeating certain institutional arrangements in the practice of caring for children and adolescents whose rights have been violated.
Let’s go back to historical data in this regard. ANDThe State’s child protection system is a long-standing policy in the country: a century ago (in the late 1920s), a “modern” child care system was established through rational and scientific methodologies that aimed to compete with philanthropy and traditional charity for the protection of abandoned children. This system was structured around the 1928 Law on Minors, whichIt meant the profound transformation of the judicial system and the installation of a new legal system for children and adolescents, with a complex network of instruments and public institutions to fulfill its objectives; among them, the creation of Juvenile Courts (today Family Courts), Juvenile Houses for diagnosis and referral, penitentiary facilities for the rehabilitation of children in conflict with the law, state subsidy mechanisms for private actions and a public institutions (the “General Directorate of Protection of Minors”) in charge of coordinating all these actions.
That old system has had few changes until today. The actions aimed at the protectiontection and rehabilitation of boys and girls were consolidated through a new Law of Minors in 1968, although without major variations with respect to the previous one. It worked on the basis of a network administered by public institutions, carried out mainly by private subsidized service providers, and carried out mainly by religious institutions and private foundations. ANDIn practice, and despite public discourse, The system created a framework that united the inertia of prison practices and traditional welfare in the hands of the same private institutions that had historically cared for vulnerable children.
The fragility of this policy was due to the meager state response to implement the legislation. For decades, the lack of protection and weaknesses in the child protection system have been constantly denounced. The lack of rehabilitation institutions and the permanence of children in prisons, the insufficient coverage of protection programs, the lack of infrastructure, the continuous riots and abuses of children were repeatedly noted.Children, etc. The few public establishments maintained an insufficient number of places for care, and in addition only in three cities in the country (Santiago, Valparaíso and Concepción). For their part, the subsidized private initiatives were mainly aimed at a young, low-risk child population.
Those in charge of applying protection policies permanently asked the governments in power to allocate the necessary resources for the application of procedures established in the minor legislation and demanded the creation of the announced and necessary establishments to comply with the purposes of the protection legislation. .
The privatization of the system under the dictatorship only deepened these unfortunate characteristics. The National Service for Minors (1979) led the process of expanding private care systems and the application of an intervention model that privileged institutionalization. The increase in coverage through the promotion of private care led to a strong development of hospitalization centers and an increase in the length of stay of children in closed facilities due to the strengthening of the subsidy system. The regulatory, institutional and administrative changes in the protection system that we have seen since the signing of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by our country (in 1990) have not changed the structure of child protection. As this is based on subsidies to private institutions for each child cared for, a strong private component is maintained in the administration and execution of care programs, with the State maintaining the subsidiary role with tasks of supervision and financial control.
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Recent challenges to the protection system have pointed out that the protection programs do not comply with the precepts of the agreements signed by the State of Chile, and in many cases their execution has meant serious violations of the rights of children and adolescents under protection. The committed process of reforming the special protection system with the creation of Better Childhood, More than a major reform, it has demonstrated the continuity of a strongly criticized system, which shows the persistence of residual practices..
History shows us that the good news, such as the necessary promulgation of the Law of Guarantees, as well as the applauded reform and end of SENAME, They require much more than a speech guaranteeing the rights of the child and the promise of great changes. It is in the implementation of public policies and legislation where reforms must be carried out, precisely where the crisis of the system is seen today. That the State of Chile is indebted to children, there is no doubt; and it is precisely the State that must provide a solution, which can hardly be through persevering in a trajectory based on institutional mechanisms of financing, supervision, and treatment with little participation of public institutions and under the dynamics of the market.
