The Federation brings together organizations whose purpose is to support any child whose parent is incarcerated so that he can maintain the link with his parent and be supported in his journey.

DSince its creation, the Federation has wished to establish links with other organizations in Europe, and this is why it has historical partners, in particular in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal.l

The Federation endeavors to pass on its experience of children and the prison environment, capitalized on over thirty years, to young professionals and volunteers. To ensure the transmission of knowledge and the cohesion of its words, it relies on the pooling of skills.

It also strives to bring together professionals from other sectors who can help it broaden its field of vision and pursue its thinking further.

It regularly questions its practices, particularly in the light of its Ethics Charter to which all of its members adhere.

It maintains a channel of listening and permanent dialogue with its members in order to have all the information necessary for the research and the implementation of strategies and support actions for the relays, in particular with the administrations and the public authorities.

It mobilizes its members to organize regional days to promote their actions.

She organises training and discussion times, think tanks around ethics, funding, of the coordination and each month a space of exchange takes place where everyone is free to come with a question, to present a project, to underline a difficulty or around a theme with guests.

To formalize your membership, you are asked

* To have read this document “general conditions of membership” and to have it approved by two members of your CA (provide full name and ID number of the two members of the CA).

* That the membership decision be validated by your board of directors

* To send us the attached information sheet relating to your organization.

* To adhere to the Ethics Charter of the Federation. 

* To commit to participating in the activities that you deem necessary to be consistent with the purpose of the Federation, in particular the times for exchanges and training and the reflection groups.

*To participate in the annual general meeting in person or online or to delegate a representative and to the meeting of Relay presidents (in project).

* To complete each year, the form of a few lines (included in the membership document) which allows us to make a statement of activities relais enfants parents on a national level.

* To pay your annual contribution (50 euros in 2023)

* You are aware that the federation asks its members to contribute their expertise by participating occasionally in a time of training and exchange, a day of support in the region, etc..

Please read the Code of Ethics now, then complete and send your membership application.

                                                                                           – OUR ETHICAL CHARTER –

The Federation of Relais Enfants Parents, throughout its history has questioned the practices of accompanying the child in a prison environment to meet his parent there. Its ethical charter is the result of continuous reflection with its partners. It offers support and a structuring framework to organizations that intervene in different ways according to their means and the needs to which they seek to provide answers. This work of reflection requiring to continue the federation has a working group on ethics in which any member who so wishes is invited to participate.

PRINCIPLE AND FIELD OF ACTION.

1) The Relais Enfants parents give themselves the mission of helping to maintain the links between the child and his incarcerated parent, and this in order to facilitate the psychological development and the socialization of the child.

• Psychological development: the estrangement of the child and his parent due to incarceration should not be synonymous with psychic separation, at the risk of increasing in the child anxieties of abandonment, and in this way to stop the internalization of parental images that are stable enough for the child to be able to do without updating the links without damage.

• Socialization: social wandering, marginalization beyond socio-economic contingencies have their prehistory in people's family history. Also helping the child to find his place in his family history is to facilitate the time when he will have to find it in the wider society.

2)  Services Relais Enfants Parents claim an educational mission, that is to say support, respectful of people and the always unique history of the individuals who call on its services.

In this spirit, the REP services refuse all kinds of dogmatism, in the field of maintaining family ties, both that of the systematic suspicion of families, and that of parental impunity.

More generally, the REPs affirm their apolitical, non-confessional nature and their refusal of ideological preconceptions.

3) The missions of the REP services, as they have just been defined, naturally fall within a pedagogical perspective directed towards the child, so they cannot be similar to socio-educational or charitable missions, towards the prisoner .

When the Relay teams are required to intervene in detention, they do so in order to facilitate the parent's role, so they will endeavor to never forget that they are addressing responsible parents and not prisoners.

MEANS OF ACTION

4) The action of the REP services participating in the missions of support and accompaniment of the child must be supervised by a professional and when it is entrusted to volunteers they will be trained beforehand in this accompaniment.

 5)  In addition, the REP services will be obliged to include and articulate their work in the actions carried out by the services and institutions in charge of actions in favor of children, families and assistance to single parents. In order to facilitate the partnership, the REP services locally take the initiative of a steering committee in order to evaluate their actions.

 6)  The specificity of the accompaniment of the link between the child and his imprisoned parent is based on a voluntary approach of the people, without interference. When it comes to helping a child become the subject of his family history, REP services do not have to become privileged actors in this history.                                                                                                                                         In this spirit, the action imposes free membership and anonymity in reference to the principle defined by the law of 1974, clarified in 2007 and 2016 and which establishes the principles of intervention of specialized prevention.

 7)  The free adherence of users to the services offered prohibits the REP services from initiating the judicial or administrative mandates entrusted to them. However, they may, within the framework of agreements, with the competent authorities in matters of child and family assistance, accept a global mandate for a geographically localized population (departments, municipalities).                                                                                                                                                                            The elaboration of such conventions and such a mandate should avoid any stigmatization, and in no case mention “children of detainees”. A child can have a detained parent, but in no case the incarceration of his parent can be an attributive and qualifying element.

 8)  The anonymity of the service must be understood as the renunciation of all missions of expertise or evaluation which could influence a judicial or administrative decision. Anonymity should not prevent participation in summaries produced by different social services when it comes to harmonizing their intervention with a family.

9)  The principles of non-interference, warrantless and anonymous interventions require vigilance and constant evaluation. The FREPI has a board of directors made up of members of the REP departments and outside personalities well known for their clinical or educational practices in the direction of the child or the family. The REP services may ask the FREPI Board of Directors to assess the relevance of an action or a decision with regard to the interests of a child and the ethics of the network.

 10) Finally, no structure can better than a critical spirit guarantee the ethical principle established by this charter "thought must always be vigilant" U. ECCO

Also, regularly within the framework of sessions or groupings, the teams will be invited to make a critical examination of their action where it will not be a question of establishing in what the finality justifies the implementation, but rather in what the implementation compromises or even contradicts the purpose.