Experts, entities, security forces and professionals from social services, education and health have shared knowledge, experiences and strategies to strengthen the protection system.
The main objective of the 1st Conference on Migration and Trafficking in Children and Adolescents is to update the training of professionals who work directly with children and adolescents in highly vulnerable situations as a result of migratory processes and the possible situations of violence they have experienced, to strengthen their care and improve their protection.
that the insular direction of Centres and Integral Attention to Children and Adolescents of the Institut Mallorquí d’Afers Socials (IMAS) has organised today, in collaboration with the Servei de Salut de les Illes Balears (Health Service of the Balearic Islands) at Son Espases.
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MAS and IB-SALUT organise the 1st Conference on Migration and Trafficking in Children and Adolescents
‘We are facing a reality that requires coordination and commitment. This year, more than 340 unaccompanied migrant minors have arrived in Mallorca. They are children and young people who have arrived all alone, looking for a better future, and their care requires a response that is not only efficient, but also humane, as the particular reality is compounded by risks such as trafficking for sexual exploitation, a threat that affects the most vulnerable’, said the councillor for Social Welfare and president of IMAS during the inauguration of the conference.
Along the same lines, the Deputy Director of Humanització, User Care and Training of IB-SALUT, Gabriel Rojo, highlighted the social and health coordination with IMAS for the organisation of this conference ‘which places the user at the centre of attention. We listen to testimonies, opinions and demands to continue moving towards better care’.
Precisely to contribute to defining, establishing and improving strategies to identify and provide assistance in an adequate way to the real needs of unaccompanied migrant children, experts from the local and national level, representatives of the security forces and institutions in the field have shared knowledge, experiences and protocols that are followed from a social, health and legal perspective in front of the 180 professionals from social services, education and health who attended the meeting. A space where the need to rethink care and articulate processes and actions to adapt protection, accompaniment and care for migrant children and adolescents to the problems intrinsic to their particular situations, such as human trafficking, has been put on the table.
In this sense, Minister Sánchez thanked and praised the joint work between ‘IMAS and IB-SALUT, as well as the involvement of all the organisations and professionals who have contributed a global and multidisciplinary vision that is key to establishing effective strategies’ and concluded that ‘IMAS and the Consell de Mallorca know that the only way to guarantee an effective protection system is to work together. This conference is an example of how the administrations can and must join forces to offer real, sustainable and humane solutions’, she said.
The island director of Centres and Comprehensive Care for Children and Adolescents stressed during the closing ceremony of the conference ‘that the protection of migrant children and adolescents is a question of rights, which challenges us all. It requires the coordination of the administrations with third sector entities and society in general. These children and adolescents are highly vulnerable, have specific needs and are subject to risks that affect their integrity from the outset. We must continue to work in terms of intervention to guarantee them a safe environment where they receive proper social and health care that allows them to develop under equal conditions, access to the same opportunities and a future like any other person of their age’.