COFA TOULOUSE

For many years, COFA Toulouse took care of the adoption of children born in France, whether they were born anonymously or were orphans. Today, our committee no longer carries out adoptions and our files have been sent to COFA Montauban. All birth parent queries may be sent to them.

However, COFA Toulouse still actively works with children, since we created Accueil et Famille, an organisation that oversees the placement of children in foster families

Accueil et Famille offers 98 places for children or teenagers who are subject to a welfare office (ASE, Aide Sociale à l’Enfance) measure or have been placed by the PJJ (Protection Judiciaire de la Jeunesse, Judicial Protection of Juveniles).

These children or teenagers have come from a family background:
· that is not able to protect their health (for example, lack of medical care), their safety or their morality,
· in which conditions for their education or for their physical, emotional, intellectual and social development are seriously compromised.

In its strictest definition, family placement is a mechanism that makes it possible to care for a child from another family, to resolve a dangerous situation for the child.

The aim is to give separated children an identity that includes a sense of family and to deal with the dysfunctional parent-child relationship, with a view to considering a return to their own families. When this is not possible, the goal is to help children’s development while maintaining a relationship with their families.

By accepting to open up their family homes to other children from different backgrounds, foster families are privileged witnesses to the development of these children. Through their capacity to speak from this shared living environment, family assistants participate in the child’s multidisciplinary development and support.