Alexandra Bataille, an educator specialising in working with young people living on the streets, is studying clinical psychology at the University of Paris. She completed her Masters placement in Kinshasa, working on our project, and more specifically in the reception centres for girls. She talks to us about this experience.
LC: How would you describe the psychological state of the young people you met?
These children have all, to a greater or lesser degree, experienced trauma. Most of them have been accused of being child witches and entrusted to churches that have often tortured them in order to exorcise them. Many were abused by their families, rejected and abandoned. They have spent time on the streets, where they have suffered numerous assaults and acts of violence. So when they arrive at the centres, they are very much affected by all that.
LC: How do you support them?LC: How do you support them?
First of all, we have to welcome them and gradually help them to (re)build a positive self-image, because this is very low. We try to reduce their level of suffering so that they feel better about themselves and about others, and so that they can look forward to a present and a future. This happens on an individual level, by working on their history and experiences, but also on a group level by learning to live in a group, in society. In the street, children have developed human relationships based on abuse and the use of force. Very early on, they had to take responsibility for themselves in order to survive, so they have to (re)learn to be children. In the centres, the educational and psychosocial care provided aims to do just that: enable them to take their place. They can eat, sleep, play, go to school, be looked after... in short, be children. This work also involves supporting the socio-educational teams to reduce their stress and strengthen their skills, enabling them to offer care that is better tailored to the children's needs.
.LC: Socio-professional integration also plays an important role in the psychological reconstruction of these children? Clearly. It's fundamental, in fact, because some of these children have no solution. They don't want to or can't return to their families because they've been abused or driven away, and they don't want to go back to the streets. So they need another option. And that means training, a trade to help them reintegrate. I think it would also be useful to develop specific centres for older young people who are in training, to support them until they have their own home, their own salary... It's vital to support them in this project, otherwise the upstream work risks coming to nothing. Psychosocial care loses its meaning without an integration project that offers a possible future. But if they are trained, they have a chance of real and lasting reintegration. LC: How are the overall problems of street children in Kinshasa evolving today?