Centre d'hébergement pour les femmes et enfants victimes de violences ღ
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Our mission in short: protection and integration
Our top priority is to protect. We provide shelter for homeless people who call the Alpes-Maritimes homeless hotline. We provide emergency accommodation for those in greatest need. As an organisation to protect children, ALC supports children in danger either in care homes or within their family. We protect women suffering from violence and human trafficking, migrants, asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors
Bonding with your baby or child can be tough when your life is torn apart, when you endure violence and alienation. This is why ALC protects infants and supports parents in precarious situations in their parenting role. The mother and baby centre in Nice provides shelter for pregnant young women and single mothers with their children. The parenting centre, also in Nice, is open to couples and alienated fathers, with their children under three. The Mother and Baby Accommodation Centre provides accommodation and support for pregnant women and mothers of children under three. Infants are also taken in at a small nursery at the shelter, and another nursery offering a variety of care options.
Since ALC was first founded in 1911, we have protected children and teens. They have led very varied lives and their needs differ too! Some are in danger within their family unit and need to be fostered out, by way of protective schemes providing educational assistance in an open setting (AEMO) or academic support at home (AED). Others are alienated and live in run-down neighbourhoods, requiring specialised prevention. There are also migrant children separated from their family (unaccompanied minors). Some have no family or friends who can look after them and they are housed at the children’s home (MECS). Yet others have a delinquent past and have been or are in the justice system (legal protection for young people). There are relevant Child Welfare Services schemes for all these cases, adapted and set up by ALC staff.
Some 2,500 homeless families and individuals have nowhere to live in Alpes-Maritimes. To meet their needs, the integrated shelter and orientation service (SIAO) centralises all applications for social housing, including emergency accommodation. ALC handles the emergency section of SIAO in Alpes-Maritimes.
On the front line of social emergency, ALC answers calls to the homeless hotline. We provide shelter for families and individuals in over 1,600 emergency accommodation beds. We also house families, individuals, couples and victims of human trafficking and violence in long-term accommodation centres (CHRS). A total of nearly 100 ALC hotline workers, social workers and educators strive every day to help find emergency and long-term accommodation solutions.
How do I escape? What help can I get? How do I protect my children? How do I meet my needs away from home? Single women and mothers with children suffering from violence are beset by all these questions. Each situation is evaluated by professionals working with the ALC scheme EPIS 06. The workers then offer them safe emergency accommodation. They are provided with support to find accommodation and achieve independence.
For children and young people suffering from violence in their own family, ALC has set up a made-to-measure scheme. 100 protective measures (educational assistance in an open setting, or AEMO) were opened up in 2021 within ALC’s division catering to children and teens.
Tél. : 04 92 07 55 00 / E-mail : puip.secretariat@association-alc.org
The Council of Europe Convention defines trafficking in human beings as the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion … for the purpose of exploitation”. The most common forms of exploitation are prostitution, slavery and forced labour.
ALC has been working for the past 25 years with victims of human trafficking. ALC steers the French scheme Ac.Sé which provides safe shelter. Once the danger has been pinpointed, the victim of human trafficking is removed from the place where they are being exploited. Ac.Sé provides shelter in accommodation provided by their partners, where the victim also gets welfare support.
Ac.Sé works with a nationwide network of over 80 partners, shelters and specialised organisations. The ALC Lucioles and Yuccas accommodation and social reintegration centres in Nice, and its Aïda scheme in Var, all belong to this network. The victims are empowered to stabilise their administrative situation and gain access to work, French lessons, healthcare, and legal proceedings against the exploitation network.
Ac.Sé’s second mission is to run a resources division (analysis, sharing best practices, training, consulting for professionals), on human trafficking, in France, Europe, and worldwide. It also contributes to many European projects and federations working in human trafficking.
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In the 2000s, ALC started providing support to the migrant population arriving from Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. They have fled their country of origin, seeking a better, or more acceptable life. These men, women and children arrive in Alpes-Maritimes after a long, chaotic, violent journey. They find themselves alone and vulnerable, in an unknown country, with no idea how things work. ALC’s mission is to protect them, support their integration and help them to learn about our culture and the principles of French citizenship.
We provide shelter to asylum seekers and their families in shelters for asylum seekers (CADA) and emergency accommodation centres for asylum seekers (HUDA). We provide shelter for migrant children in our three services for unaccompanied minors. We set up the “Ricochets” scheme providing migrants with psychological support.
