First of all, a placement decision made by the juvenile judge or the Social Assistance for Children (ASE) is always the result of aggravating family circumstances that could hinder a child’s good development. In France, according to Navès, Cathala and Deparis (2000), the reasons that necessitated a separation of the child from his original family environment are multiple: serious educational and emotional deficiencies, psychological or psychiatric difficulties of the parents, abuse (incest, bodily abuse, sexual assault), family conflicts, and many other reasons that can jeopardize the entire existence of a child born in the world. These children start in life carrying a “baggage” of traumatic experiences with significant consequences on their development and the construction of their personality, not to mention the deleterious impact of separation from parents that can be combined with the separation with sublings.
Since the law of December 30, 1996, and the law of March 5, 2007, the interest of the child must lead to preserve, as much as possible, his relations with his brothers and sisters. These legal texts have thus given a value to the protective and supportive function of the fraternal bond, while considering the nuisance and abuse that can be exerted within it. Therefore, when an investment is decided, the children are entrusted to the ESA in two ways: alone or with their siblings. However, in the field, it seems that this ideology of maintaining the fraternal bond must be erased behind decisions of fraternal separation taken for practical reasons (places of placement available, capacity of reception) leaving little room for questioning on the option that would be most appropriate for children’s well-being.
In fact, many children are separated from their siblings without his or her choice. Besides, to the traumatic effect of placement is added that of the break-up of fraternal cohabitation, the brothers and sisters having sometimes put in place common coping strategies to protect themselves and possibly strengthening their fraternal bonds. But then, what “transport” these children placed, sometimes even moved and replaced, and therefore subject to repeated abandonment? How do these children adapt to these multitudes of traumas, to which is added the fear of permanent abandonment? What psychic reworkings are all these children facing? What similarities and differences can we highlight between children placed alone and those placed with their siblings? We will attempt in this study, through the analysis of clinical cases, to understand and analyze the differences between young children placed alone and those placed with their siblings, in order to identify the potentially protective effect of fraternal placement.
To sum up, the aim of this study was to examine parental representations and anxiety manifestations following abandonment, with two participants placed with their siblings and two placed separately, all aged between 4 and 6. These two factors have been respectively measured, for each child, by the drawing of the real family, the drawing of the imaginary family, the Children Apperception Test (C.A.T.) and the Patte Noire (PN) test. Then, we made comparisons between the group of children placed with their siblings and the group of children placed alone. The results showed that participants placed with their siblings would more easily present parenting representations than single children. In addition, it was found that children placed with their siblings were more likely to mobilize more appropriate defences in the management of the abandonment problem caused by different tools, than children placed alone. However, these established findings will be tempered in this research, owing to the influence of important intra-individual and psychodynamic factors. This qualitative study, through four clinical cases, thus seeks to enrich the theoretical contributions of the impact of fraternal placement and those of the clinic of children placed in institutions.
Words i have learned :
- jeopardize : compromettre
- strengthening : renforcer
- psychic reshuffle : remaniement psychique
Bibliography :
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