We organised the conference ‘The Child Guarantee among vulnerable children’ with the Childhood Platform [editar]

The State Action Plan for the Implementation of the European Child Guarantee (2022-2030) recognises that certain groups, such as Roma children, require specific measures to access essential rights

The European Child Guarantee (ECG) is the European Union's strategy to combat poverty and social exclusion among children and adolescents. Its aim is to ensure that those at risk have access to essential services such as education, early childhood care and education, extracurricular activities, healthcare, healthy food and adequate housing.

In Spain, the State Action Plan for the Implementation of the ECG (2022-2030) recognises that certain groups of children require specific measures to access these rights, such as Roma children, migrant children and children with disabilities.

In this context, the Fundación Secretariado Gitano (FSG) and the Children Platform, with funding from the Ministry for Youth and Children, organised the conference ‘The Child Guarantee among vulnerable children’ to analyse the implementation of the ECGMin Spain and its impact on these priority groups, with the participation of institutional representatives and experts in child policy.

The conference was opened by Ángel Mª García Frontelo, deputy director of the European Social Fund Administrative Unit; Ricardo Ibarra, director of the Children Platform; and Sara Giménez, director general of the FSG, among other representatives of social organisations.

In her speech, Sara Giménez sought to convey the magnitude of the impact of poverty on Roma children, pointing out that ‘the most recent estimates indicate that there are around 300 000 Roma children living in Spain, of whom nine out of ten (89.1%) live in poverty and more than half in severe poverty’. ‘The European Child Guarantee must be a turning point for increasing special budgetary and regulatory efforts aimed at these children.’

For Ricardo Ibarra, ‘the European Child Guarantee is a key tool for ensuring that children in Spain who face the greatest difficulties can access their rights on an equal footing, especially’. He added that ‘Roma, migrant and disabled children cannot wait: we need to speed up the implementation of the State Action Plan and provide it with the necessary resources’.

Patricia Pérez-Gómez Delaunay, Head of the Spain-Malta Unit at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Employment, then analysed the role of the ECG in the fight against child poverty, and Javier Moreno, Vice-President for International Relations at the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) addressed the ECG as a public policy, from its design to its implementation in reality.

The conference devoted a specific section to the impact of the ECG on priority groups, discussing Roma children, immigrant children and children with disabilities. Carolina Fernández Díez, Deputy Director General for Advocacy and Rights Defence at the FSG, presented the report by the European Network EURoma on Roma children and the European Child Guarantee. Gabriel González-Bueno, a specialist in childhood policies at UNICEF Spain, focused on migrant children, while Inés Guerrero Bueno, from the confederation 'Plena inclusión' (Full Inclusion), spoke about the situation of children with disabilities. The implementation of the ECG in the regions of Spain was also analysed.

The conference provided an opportunity to exchange experiences and strengthen the strategy for protecting the rights of the most vulnerable children.