‘This is systemic’: Parents demand accountability over child abuse in French childcare system

To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 10:34 Issued on: 01/09/2026 - 12:18 Eve Irvine is pleased to welcome Anne, the co-founder of SOS Périscolaire in French. She argues that the controversy surrounding France’s after-school childcare system should be understood as a systemic failure of institutional accountability on the local level. The fragmented structure becomes particularly consequential when warnings about violence are known but fail to produce adequate institutional change. The result, she argues, is a system in which children may speak clearly, repeatedly, or even physically through behavioural changes, yet still struggle to be heard by institutions designed to protect them. Keywords for this article