She is the "Mrs. Health" of children in care: beaten by her father for 10 years before being "saved" by the former Ddass, Céline Greco has been moving heaven and earth to ensure that children in child protection are no longer "the great forgotten of the Republic."
"My fight is to ensure that these children have the same rights as all other children who grow up in loving families," sums up the 40-year-old professor of medicine behind her multi-coloured round glasses.
"We absolutely must end this double punishment of having suffered violence and neglect and watching others go on holiday, take dance lessons, be able to pursue higher education" or even benefit from simple medical monitoring, she insists in her office at the Necker-Enfants Malades hospital.
The frail but dynamic head of the Pain and Palliative Medicine department of the emblematic Parisian hospital knows how titanic the mission she has set herself is. Often "exhausting", she sighs, sometimes even "discouraging" given the mountain to climb and the politicians to convince.
Embolized, the child welfare sector (Ase, ex-Ddass) is cracking everywhere, between lack of budget, shortage of professionals, exhaustion of field workers and saturated justice.
The health and education support for the approximately 390,000 children and adolescents in ASE remains in its infancy, with long-documented consequences.
If not taken care of and treated quickly, a child victim of violence would lose an average of 20 years of life expectancy.
Currently, "only 30% of children who have suffered violence or serious neglect have a health check when they arrive in the child protection system," says Céline Greco indignantly.
– “A bear every night” –
The impact of violence suffered as a child is immense. To illustrate this, Céline Greco takes the example of a chance encounter with a bear in the forest. "You will either flee or fight, and to achieve this your brain will order your adrenal glands to secrete adrenaline and cortisol, which are stress hormones."
But "if the bear comes home every night" as is the case in domestic violence, this stress becomes toxic and we have children who, as adults, develop cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, who have many more strokes than others," she adds.
Other consequences include an increased risk of diabetes and autoimmune diseases, difficulties in regulating emotions and learning disorders.
For Céline Greco, years have passed since the psychological and physical violence suffered by her father who wanted to make her a piano prodigy.
But she still bears the scars of daily beatings, food deprivation, confinement in the cellar and humiliations like the time he shaved his head for failing a piano exercise.
"When I was placed at 14, after being identified by a school nurse, I had no follow-up regarding my health and I accumulated after-effects and today here I am: I have the bones of an 80-year-old woman, I have osteoporosis, I have almost no teeth that are mine in my mouth, I have a deviated nasal septum and a compressed vertebra," she lists.
– Chernobyl Cloud –
To tackle this blind spot, she has been multiplying initiatives for several years. In 2017, she set up a "child health" commission within the National Council for Child Protection (CNPE).
In 2021, she initiated mobile teams at the hospital to identify child victims of abuse. She founded the Im'pactes association with one goal: to finally ensure that children and adolescents who have been through the ASE receive health and education support.
A fan of outspokenness, she does not mince her words against the lack of support for young people when they leave the ASE – "as if, like the Chernobyl cloud, it stopped at the age of 18", she says ironically – and is furious about the absence of a ministry specifically responsible for Children.
"Since children don't vote, they're not of much interest."
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