le Centre d’aide familiale menacé de disparition
By Clémence Drotz
The 52 employees of the Bordeaux Family Assistance Center are afraid of being unemployed and are waiting for concrete responses from the Department, which largely finances the association that employs them.
VSn Monday, November 22 in the morning, the employees of the Bordeaux Family Assistance Center gather in front of the Gironde prefecture. They are social and family intervention technicians (TISF) or educational and social support workers (AES) and are hired by an association which has been in the process of safeguarding for two years.
80% funded by the Department, the association must make a projection of hours each year for the following year. If the hours are not made, she is supposed to reimburse her funders. The debt would have accumulated. “In March 2020, the Department told us that there was mismanagement of the association. We know that the debt has been accumulating for ten years. Except that it is the Department which validates our budget. Why hasn’t he done anything in all this time? », Asks Véronique Lelibon, CGT union representative.
“We don’t know what will become of us”
According to the union, during a hearing on October 22, the Department announced that it would stop funding the association on December 31. The Communist Departmental Councilor Sébastien Laborde details that “the court decided that this association was in cessation of activity, so the Department had to withdraw its approval. However, the 52 employees provided a service to nearly 400 families, which is why we exercise that they continue to work in the two other departmental associations which carry out the same missions ”. For the moment, this solution remains in the state of corridor noise and no official announcement has been made.
The angry employees were received by Marie-Claude Agullana, vice-president in charge of child protection at the Department. Their questions did not find few answers. The body promised that it would take care of the salaries until the end of the procedure, in a few months, but did not say anything about the future safeguard of their jobs. “We do not know what will become of us and our management says it does not know either,” laments Véronique Lelibon.