Emanuel Areias, President of the Azores Commission for Childhood, says the region’s child-protection system cannot continue placing every responsibility on the CPCJ. After a regional gathering attended by more than 200 participants each day, his message is clear: prevention must begin earlier, institutions must fulfill their obligations, and those entrusted with protecting children need better conditions to do their work.
Child protection should not begin when danger has already acquired a name, a file, and an institutional response. It should begin earlier—in the classroom where a teacher notices a change, in the health center where a professional recognizes a warning sign, in the social institution that understands a family’s vulnerability, and within a community capable of seeing protection not as someone else’s responsibility but as a collective obligation. That was among the central messages emerging from the 8th Regional Meeting of the Commissions for the Protection of Children and Young People (CPCJ) in the Azores.
Emanuel Areias, President of the Azores Commission for Childhood, described the two-day meeting as highly successful, bringing together more than 200 participants each day. CPCJ commissioners and technical staff were joined by social-security professionals, specialists working with children, local government representatives, magistrates and members of the security forces, particularly the PSP. Yet beyond participation numbers, Areias emphasized one conclusion: “We cannot demand more from the CPCJ without simultaneously creating better conditions for them to carry out their mission.”
The current child-protection law, whose last major revision occurred in 2015, rests upon a principle Areias considers fundamentally sound: protecting children is the responsibility of the community as a whole. His argument is therefore not for reform simply for the sake of legislative change. Before rewriting the law, institutions must comply with what it already requires. Education, health, social security, local government, and social-solidarity institutions all have defined responsibilities within the protection system, yet when required representation or participation fails, Areias argues that existing mechanisms are not always sufficient to restore a commission’s proper functioning.
He also believes the CPCJ must give greater recognition to those working within it. The issue, he stresses, is not primarily additional remuneration, but practical recognition of the responsibility these functions entail. Possible measures include greater flexibility in reconciling CPCJ responsibilities with a commissioner’s principal profession, recognition of CPCJ work in performance evaluations, access to psychological support, clearer legal assistance, and more flexible working arrangements. Particular attention should also be given to technical support staff, whom Areias describes as frequently constituting the professional heart of the commissions. Access to specialized and certified training is another priority, with cooperation being strengthened with the National Commission for the Promotion of the Rights and Protection of Children and Young People.
But perhaps the most consequential argument concerns what happens before a case reaches a CPCJ. Schools, healthcare services, public agencies, IPSS, and other institutions working with children should be able to identify warning signs and respond. At the same time, a problem is still a risk, not a danger. Throughout the year, the Azores Commission for Childhood has held information sessions in every municipality of the Region precisely to clarify these responsibilities and strengthen preventive capacity.
“Not everything has to end up at the CPCJ,” Areias argues. Simply referring every early warning sign onward risks turning child protection into what he describes figuratively as “passing the hot potato.” CPCJ commissions are essential, but they cannot replace schools, health services, social organizations, or other institutions close to children that can intervene sooner. Effective prevention therefore requires better-trained professionals, greater consistency in identifying and responding to risk, and stronger cooperation between institutions.
This distinction between risk and danger may ultimately be the most important one. Once danger is established, intervention becomes urgent and necessarily more complex. Earlier action can sometimes prevent a vulnerable situation from reaching that point. In child protection, success cannot be measured only by how effectively institutions respond to crises; it must also be measured by how many crises are prevented from developing.
The future of the system, then, may depend less upon creating another layer of responsibility than upon ensuring that existing responsibility is genuinely shared. A CPCJ can protect, accompany and intervene. It cannot be the eyes, ears and conscience of an entire society.
A child belongs first to a family, but the responsibility for keeping childhood safe extends further. It reaches the school, the health service, the institutions, the neighborhood and ultimately the community itself. Because the most important moment to protect a child is not after something has happened. It is before it does.
Based on an interview published in Diário Insular-José Lourenço-director-Photos from DI.
