La visite des parents à leur enfant placé est le principal mécanisme par lequel il est possible de maintenir la relation parent/enfant lorsque les familles sont séparées par le placement. Si la réflexion sur le sujet est riche au plan clinique, les recherches sur ce thème demeurent encore rares. Cet article présente une revue de la littérature autour des enjeux de la visite parentale dans le cadre du placement de l’enfant en institution. Nous discuterons des bénéfices démontrés pour le bien-être de l’enfant et le devenir du placement, mais aussi les questions que soulèvent certains effets négatifs. Enfin, de nouvelles pistes de recherches et de réflexions dans ce domaine seront proposées et étayées par la présentation rapide des résultats d’une recherche exploratoire pilote récente sur l’effet de la visite parentale chez le bébé placé.

One of the major challenges in child protection is about building or maintaining the relationship between the child and her/his biological parents. It is usually the children's judge, aiming at preserving the child's interests that requires the placement, while fewer placements occur on a voluntary basis. Parental visitation is the main mechanism liable to maintain family ties during placement and to help the child dealing with the feeling of abandonment. The literature on this subject is historically anchored in the field on the effect of maternal deprivation that was so important after the Second World War. However, although profuse, available literature is still essentially composed by clinical writings made by clinical professionals who share their experiences and questions derived from their every day practices. Relatively to its meaning and value to child protection policies and practices, there are only a limited number of scientific reports and empirical studies including assessment protocols on the effect of maintaining the contact between the child placed for protection purposes and her/his parents.

The present paper proposes a literature review on the issues at stake around parental visitation of children placed in institutional context.

The authors review the main results of the literature on the beneficial effect of parental visits to the placed child, notably in terms of child well-being and placement outcome and duration. It also emerges that research in this field still suffers of quite passionate but quite old controversies of two kinds: firstly, the suitability of organizing parental visitation on a systematic basis; secondly, how to understand and interpret the negative reaction that some children show after having contact with their biological parents. The authors also discuss the methodological issues and weaknesses regarding sample selection, variable control, and scientific validity of assessment methods.

The authors propose a change of standpoint that opens the discussion to new directions for future research, aiming at emerge from entangled positions pro or against the maintaining of the parent-child relationship in case of placement. These new perspectives are detailed and illustrated by the presentation of the results of a recent exploratory research on the effect of parental visitation for babies placed in foster institutional care. Undoubtedly, more research is needed in the field of child protection, and in particular, on the issue of maintaining the contact between the child and his/her family, and its modalities, in order to provide a constructive support to the child and his/her family and a more grounded basis for the decision making process.