Position yourself at child height, newborn height. This is the bias of journalist Karine Dusfour with her new documentary, produced by Mélissa Theuriau for the magazine “Infrarouge”. For several months, its camera followed three babies entrusted to the Val-de-Marne foster care service, which welcomes toddlers for a few weeks to a few months, before being directed to a family or another place of care. In France, around 10,000 babies are cared for in nurseries.
We thus discover Basile, born under X, in the maternity ward where he was born a week earlier; Anne-Lise, whom her mother, unable to take care of her properly, entrusted to child welfare at the age of one; Marion, 4 months old, also born under X. Three toddlers whose blurred faces in no way detract from the emotion that their traumatic family history provokes in the viewer.
With grace, Karine Dusfour films the first steps in the lives of these foster children who, in their misfortune, are lucky enough to find a myriad of good fairies along their path. These are “tatas” (the nickname given to family assistants), childcare assistants and other social workers from the child protection service of Sucy-en-Brie (Val-de-Marne), including commitment commands admiration. Their goal: to restore these toddlers’ trust in adults.
A very feminine world
There is, for example, “Auntie Simone”, who welcomes Basile into her home until his adoption, at two and a half months. But also Catherine, childcare assistant at the nursery, who takes care of Anne-Lise from her arrival in tears one evening until she leaves for a foster family where she will find her brother. And all the rest of the team of this model service – a very feminine world – that we discover during meetings, where situations are weighed, examined with a single compass, that of the best interests of the children in their care. entrusted.
Very delicate, this luminous film goes against the shock reports on the failures of child protection. Not that its director, with a marked interest in these subjects (she had notably documented the daily life of children’s judge Edouard Durand in Bouche cousue, broadcast in 2020), ignores them. But by filming the beneficial and visible effects on babies of this social work imbued with good treatment, she highlights the ingredients that make it successful: a trained, stable team, in exchange and reflection.
An example to follow ? During a screening organized at the Ministry of Health on Tuesday, November 7, attended by the Secretary of State for Children, Charlotte Caubel, and parliamentarians, Karine Dusfour expressed the hope that “this documentary will serve to generate vocations and pushes the State and departments to devote more resources to these professions.
