The Canary Islands Government continues to seek support to improve care for unaccompanied foreign minors. The President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, and the Minister of Social Welfare, Candelaria Delgado, held separate meetings today with representatives of Save the Children and Unicef to assess the possibility of opening new avenues of collaboration with both entities, in order to improve care for unaccompanied migrant children on the islands.
Fernando Clavijo thanked Save the Children for their support during all these months and their presence always "in a constructive manner" in the care of unaccompanied minors arriving on the islands. Clavijo explained how, through the projects that the NGO is going to launch in the Canary Islands, it will be possible to start treating "minors with dignity and not as merchandise", through listening and knowing where they come from, what they want to do, or if they have a family network. "This will mean a structural change in the care of children, unaccompanied minors," he stressed.
These meetings are part of the regional executive's search for formulas to guarantee the rights of these minors while continuing to try to get the two major parties in Congress -PSOE and PP- to reach an agreement to reform the Immigration Law so that care for unaccompanied foreign minors is carried out jointly by all the autonomous communities.
The President of the Executive insisted that the "definitive solution involves an agreement, a protocol to provide a global response" and that they will continue working to reach the Conference of Presidents "with a proposal on the table to seek that agreement between the State Administration and all the regional presidents", because he stressed that "if there is a cause for which there should be political unanimity, it is the care of children".
For his part, the Director General of Save the Children, Andrés Conde, highlighted the Canary Islands Government's willingness to collaborate with social entities to resolve a situation that needs solutions and in which "it is essential to provide structural solutions to the migration issue, whichever government comes, it will encounter this situation", which is why he appealed to the "co-responsibility of the central government and autonomous communities to find solutions that alleviate the congestion situation that exists in the Canary Islands".
Among the projects that Save the Children will deploy is support for the psychosocial situation of children in the protection system. Through its resources, it will be possible to expand specialized psychological care to carry out an individual assessment of each minor, and through a specific interview, to learn about the situation of each of the minors and be able to determine the best solution for each of them.
After the meeting with Unicef, the Minister of Social Welfare, Candelaria Delgado, explained that the Canary Islands has put on the table "the needs of the islands, and the possibility of help in the care of minors, which the Canary Islands Government carries out practically alone". In addition to, "exploring avenues of collaboration that also allow us to know the reality of the countries of origin, and the circumstances that these children have gone through in those countries".
Delgado stressed that "Unicef has offered different tools that can help in the management of this migration crisis and both parties have agreed to hold different technical meetings to advance in the improvement of care for unaccompanied minors".
The Minister of Social Welfare recalled that the number of minors under the guardianship of the autonomous government continues to increase after the latest arrivals and now stands at over 5,300. "We have not found more properties to house migrant minors, we urgently need the two major parties to sit down to negotiate and reach an agreement that allows us to provide a state response to the situation these children are experiencing," she said. "It is not just about providing them with a dignified initial reception, but about ensuring that they integrate and can continue their lives," she added.
The autonomous government has been caring for minors arriving on its shores virtually alone for over a year. To this end, it has allocated financial items that have allowed the opening and maintenance of accommodation infrastructures and has incorporated 24 employees -administrative and social workers- to improve the response.
In addition to the working meeting, the entities are learning first-hand these days about the difficulties involved in providing comprehensive care to minors. To this end, they are visiting some of the 81 resources that the Government has in Tenerife and El Hierro these days to care for minors.