Responsibility by public servants – an impossible task
One of the most important news in June 2011 was the judgment in the Broenderslev case where parents neglected their own children in a very serious way.
We are talking corporal punishment. It is not allowed for parents to hit their children in Denmark. We are talking poor housing standard and clothes not suited for the weather conditions. We are talking of children starving. We are talking of sexual molestation of the oldest girl – which at the end was a young woman aged 20.
They were not foster parents so they are by Danish laws upheld to the strictest standards. They cannot just kill their children like the foster parents from Klarup where the husband wrote the death certificate whenever one of the children left for a better place. They cannot hit the children like the foster parents in Mern (Maybe it is illegal but as the case has been lost somewhere, it has not yet got to the trail phase despite numerous witnesses) and of course they cannot have sex with children in their care. There have been cases in the foster care system like the case with 3 sisters near the town of Skaelskoer where they were molested by their foster parent and the official didn’t believe them because children in foster are presumed to lie by default.
The parents were convicted but because the media continued to ask why this family wasn’t discovered before their case were extreme, the system was forced to analyze why it went wrong.
Everybody in the system have done their best to remove their involvement in this case so the earliest mention of this family was some 5 years back when they already had 6 children and were living in a house close to collapse down at Lolland. The police has visited them and noticed the standards. They had photographed their house and sent the photos to the child protection services (CPS). The people from CPS vent for a visit but the father wouldn’t open the door so they left again - End of that!
Reports came in. The children didn’t always attend school and when they did they came in dirty and worn-out clothes. The CPS visited once more and once more they were not let in.
So it went for some years. The family got more children. Then at some point the CPS stated that they wanted to make the report-50 on the family. It is a serious matter. It could end up with the removal of the family or it could mean that therapists either move in with the family or the family has to move into a center where they would be observed 24/7 by therapists.
When the report was finished it recommended massive support for the family. Then the family did choose to leave down and the report was archived somewhere.
However in the new town (Skanderborg) they were not welcome. It has partly something to do with our history. In the old days whenever people was out of the job they were offered a one-way ticket to one of the larger towns so they would not be a burden the local community. There they could hide without bringing shame to their family name. Now where people are obligated to take whatever job they are offered the traffic has reversed. If you live where there are no jobs you cannot be put into one. Skanderborg doesn’t want to belong to the part of Denmark called “The rotten Banana” so when people start talking of poor newcomers in their community they sent out their own SWAT team of social workers demanding all kind of improvements so families are stressed to move. You cannot close the door on them. They have some kind of loophole in our laws so they can force themselves in without a court order (There are according to sources 78 ways authorities can avoid the constitutional right for a Dane to have privacy on their own property. One of them is to inspect whether there is a television in the house).
The family left Skanderborg after only 4 months during the night. They left no forwarding address but they rented a house in Broenderslev. Up there the houses are of general poor standard and they are often rented to poor people from the cities that are hiding from work or because they have gotten some work-related injury – such cases usually take 10-15 years to handle and most people have to declare bankruptcy before they can get the aid they are entitled to.
After some 4 months the authorities in Bronderslev discovered that the family was living there. They got the reports from Skanderborg but for some reason they disappeared - properly because they were filed correctly. In another case where the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb by mistake up in Greenland the workers who were exposed to radiation couldn’t get compensation for their illnesses because the reports disappeared until many years later where the reports were discovered to have been placed where they were supposed to be –archived correctly. By then most of the workers were of course dead and it is believed that this trick saved millions for the Danish state.
We don’t know what the report was archived. We do know that social workers from Broenderslev visited the family months later when neighbors and the school made the same kinds of complaints as down at Lolland. We also know that the social workers were not allowed entry to the house. They didn’t do more hoping that the family would leave. Putting 9 kids into foster care would increase the tax percent by one or two point forcing the entire community to suffer.
But then the oldest girl – now a young woman escaped home to her birth mother. What she revealed that she had been molested the police arrested the parents and the children were taken into foster care. But now the ugly part of the story started. Who should pick up the bill?
After a long dispute the state ruled that Lolland pay because they did just as little as Broenderslev but they were first. However regardless of the fact that Lolland has to pay it is still called the Broenderslev case. The town has down a lot to make it go away as fast as possible. They have split up the siblings to a number of facilities and foster families hoping that the children will forget their family and history. They have torn down the house the family lived in. They have promoted the social workers who visited the family, so they could not do the same mistake another time and finally they fired some member of the administration down at the city hall so they could say that some are responsible.
People are angry at the handing but for what reason? They get what they pay for! None wants to pay more in taxes. Then the district attorney wants to investigate if they can charge some of the social workers for not doing their jobs. Bad idea! Next time a family has a problem and it could be dealt with by some therapy the social workers would charge in and remove the child because they rather would be safe than sorry - of course not because they care about the child but because they wouldn’t risk criminal prosecution
Let me state it rather clearly. It is a case which only deserves to be forgotten. We cannot place every child in foster care which needs it.
First of all because it would not benefit the child. There are many cases every year where children at group homes or therapeutic boarding schools or even normal boarding school are molested once every 14 day on average. Search for Fenskaer which is an “Efterskole” (boarding school) for children with special need. One of the children got a lot of things put into his behind and the manager of the school knew about the toxic environment but failed to do something about it, because it is so normal on every single of the schools.
Second of all there are the cases where foster parents go too far. Most of the cases are hidden by case workers and it took 12 years for the case from Mern to get the attention from the police.
Third of all because foster is until you are 18. Then you are kicked out on the streets and your only option is then to return home regardless of how the conditions are.
Can you not make at least someone responsible?
No because the responsible parties are the voters. They choose who is member of the parliament. They choose who runs the cities. They want this level of responsibility as long as they have to pay for it and as long they don’t need services. Once they do they realize their mistakes but then it is too late.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Get tough on crime scam in Denmark
So now people can get parole when they have served two months of their sentence. That is the cost because our parliament wanted to send a message to people considering to make home invasions their line of business.
So we would have people serving 3-5 years for this specific crime - a horrible crime but what kind of crime isn't?
It is the wrong message to send criminals. "We would punish your hard but we will let you out early"
People will lose respect for our laws. Look at California. People who are sentenced to 180 days end up serving 18 days in jail or 30-40 days in home confinement, because the jails is overbooked. Isn't that a joke?
Take a person like the former mayor Brixtofte. Some people claimed that he broke the law. However until the court in his case decided that politicians could eat for DKK 1,000 per meal, there was no limit. Now all politicians struggle to eat for just under this limit. He got two years in jail and he wasn't granted a parole despite the fact that the only gain he got was the expensive meals. All the other good things he did for the citizens in his town are forgotten.
Maybe his sentence should have been tough - I don't know, I don't care because the lesson I learned from his case was not to be involved in local politics. It is a dirty business where you are back-stabbed if you are not alert 24/7.
I believe that we as voters are lied to by the politicians over in Copenhagen. Letting people out of jail early without anyone thinking about what they should do will result in more crime. While I feel for the victims of home invasions and I support strict border controls because such crime is done by so-called tourists, I just don't get what people convicted off assault should be let out before time.
Please explain me why I should believe that the politicians are not trying to fool us?
So we would have people serving 3-5 years for this specific crime - a horrible crime but what kind of crime isn't?
It is the wrong message to send criminals. "We would punish your hard but we will let you out early"
People will lose respect for our laws. Look at California. People who are sentenced to 180 days end up serving 18 days in jail or 30-40 days in home confinement, because the jails is overbooked. Isn't that a joke?
Take a person like the former mayor Brixtofte. Some people claimed that he broke the law. However until the court in his case decided that politicians could eat for DKK 1,000 per meal, there was no limit. Now all politicians struggle to eat for just under this limit. He got two years in jail and he wasn't granted a parole despite the fact that the only gain he got was the expensive meals. All the other good things he did for the citizens in his town are forgotten.
Maybe his sentence should have been tough - I don't know, I don't care because the lesson I learned from his case was not to be involved in local politics. It is a dirty business where you are back-stabbed if you are not alert 24/7.
I believe that we as voters are lied to by the politicians over in Copenhagen. Letting people out of jail early without anyone thinking about what they should do will result in more crime. While I feel for the victims of home invasions and I support strict border controls because such crime is done by so-called tourists, I just don't get what people convicted off assault should be let out before time.
Please explain me why I should believe that the politicians are not trying to fool us?
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Denmark - leaving a wound open
In the United States they have a webpage like "The case for the foster care system is written in Stone"
They then list a number of cases where children have been molested, in some cases even killed while they were inside the foster care system. Having a lower number of citizens and therefore fewer kids in our foster care system, the number of children who have lost their lives is fewer.
Also the number of cases where the children have been exposed of abuse is fewer. Take for instance the number of children who have been raped or exposed of other kind of sexual molestation. Only one case every 14 days according to numbers from 2009!
But our system has of course the same kind of problems as the foster care system in the United States. Here children also are aging out the system to be kicked out on to the streets unless they are so lucky that they can go back to their original family and avoid a life as homeless on the streets.
We do also have our educational consultants but in this case not helping the parents by rather the social services finding placements for children. Often these people paid by the social services are the only one who can explain why they recommend a specific place for a child and they don’t like to be asked. We as ordinary citizens don’t like to ask how the money train functions and perhaps this is an error.
About 14,000 children enter the Danish foster care system every year. As long as the local department of social services could get some kind of refund from the state they didn’t really care. Often they waited until a child took the wrong track for too long, so the police and court came to. From that point on the state took over until recently. Now the bill is sent back to the local departments of social services and this change got the employees into gear, so suddenly they are able to fix the children and more importantly the parents in time. Because we all know that it is rarely the children which are the problem. It rest with their parents.
But how are the group homes? We don’t really know. Our parliament has a team which should be able to visit any kind of residential facility unannounced. They have only tried that once with a juvenile group home. When they did try to visit Solhaven – one of our group homes in a remote part of Jutland where local goon – former fishermen ruined by the European Union – has created their own local boot camp using muscle force to put back on the right track, the counselor came at our politicians and forced them to drive back to Copenhagen or face arrest by the local biased sheriff. Since none have care about how the children did at the groups not at the present or in the past.
Until…
A report about an old group home called Godhavn were published this month. The report covered a period from WWII to 1975 and it did show rape, corporal punishment (outlawed In group homes since 1937 – today it is called restraints or positive peer control), rape and convicted child offenders having free access to the campus.
The children from then are grown men today. Many are suffering from PTSD, others have committed suicide and almost everyone carries some kind of emotional scar as result of their stay in the group home. Also discovered but little mentioned that much were the medical trials conducted without parental or other kind of consent. The cost of these trials which the boys had to endure was dearly paid but they benefit children with mental issues today.
It is been 3 decades since this period stopped when they honored the director of the campus before he left so people would start talking about his dirty work. It would be easy to say as present politician that we are sorry because the people who were elected back then didn’t do their job, but No.
They won’t say that they are sorry!
Why? Properly because we are only talking troubled children from dysfunction families which are a burden on the society.
We are talking about the politician saying: “Sorry. It is your problem that you were born into that family”
Is that fair?
I don’t believe so, but people in general have a lack of empathy when it comes to troubled children – worldwide!!
Denmark had a broken foster care system back then!
We still have a broken foster care system!
Last year the department of social services in Broenderslev did send a blind social worker who had caught a cold out to such a dysfunctional family. She didn’t notice the clothes of the children falling apart. She didn’t notice diapers not changed for 14 days and old stool integrated in the skin on the legs of the children - All things which neighbors, school and everyone else had seen. This social worker was set up. She has become the fall guy for a dysfunction system. This family had been living in 3 different towns. In every town people had reported them to the social services. Everybody just hoped that they would continue to move on, so they didn’t have to pay for housing these kids to foster care system!
When they then entered the foster care system, the authorities spilt them so they couldn’t start talking with each other and approach them media. So now several kids are alone in the foster system - a system where they could be the unlucky child who will be exposed to sexual abuse every 14 day. Now they cannot even cover for each other!
It is not fair, but we are talking about a system we don’t really want to know anything about.
When Denmarks Radio showed how they worked at Schuberts Minde – another group home in Ringkoebing where a quick search on the internet tell a story about suicide attempts and numerous runways every year, one large newspaper wrote that they shouldn’t have broadcasted it at all.
The appeal system has published a report showing there are errors in 64 percent of the cases where children are removed from their families. Perhaps too many are in the system, so there is not enough time to deal with every single case as much as it matters for the child. Perhaps the money flow demands that a certain number of children just have to be in the system so the social workers can continue to justify their paycheck. I don’t know.
But I do know that the boys from Godhavn should receive an apology. They were failed back then, like so many children are failed today by the same system.
We have to start somewhere to clean up this mesh. An apology to the boys from Godhavn is a good place to start.
They then list a number of cases where children have been molested, in some cases even killed while they were inside the foster care system. Having a lower number of citizens and therefore fewer kids in our foster care system, the number of children who have lost their lives is fewer.
Also the number of cases where the children have been exposed of abuse is fewer. Take for instance the number of children who have been raped or exposed of other kind of sexual molestation. Only one case every 14 days according to numbers from 2009!
But our system has of course the same kind of problems as the foster care system in the United States. Here children also are aging out the system to be kicked out on to the streets unless they are so lucky that they can go back to their original family and avoid a life as homeless on the streets.
We do also have our educational consultants but in this case not helping the parents by rather the social services finding placements for children. Often these people paid by the social services are the only one who can explain why they recommend a specific place for a child and they don’t like to be asked. We as ordinary citizens don’t like to ask how the money train functions and perhaps this is an error.
About 14,000 children enter the Danish foster care system every year. As long as the local department of social services could get some kind of refund from the state they didn’t really care. Often they waited until a child took the wrong track for too long, so the police and court came to. From that point on the state took over until recently. Now the bill is sent back to the local departments of social services and this change got the employees into gear, so suddenly they are able to fix the children and more importantly the parents in time. Because we all know that it is rarely the children which are the problem. It rest with their parents.
But how are the group homes? We don’t really know. Our parliament has a team which should be able to visit any kind of residential facility unannounced. They have only tried that once with a juvenile group home. When they did try to visit Solhaven – one of our group homes in a remote part of Jutland where local goon – former fishermen ruined by the European Union – has created their own local boot camp using muscle force to put back on the right track, the counselor came at our politicians and forced them to drive back to Copenhagen or face arrest by the local biased sheriff. Since none have care about how the children did at the groups not at the present or in the past.
Until…
A report about an old group home called Godhavn were published this month. The report covered a period from WWII to 1975 and it did show rape, corporal punishment (outlawed In group homes since 1937 – today it is called restraints or positive peer control), rape and convicted child offenders having free access to the campus.
The children from then are grown men today. Many are suffering from PTSD, others have committed suicide and almost everyone carries some kind of emotional scar as result of their stay in the group home. Also discovered but little mentioned that much were the medical trials conducted without parental or other kind of consent. The cost of these trials which the boys had to endure was dearly paid but they benefit children with mental issues today.
It is been 3 decades since this period stopped when they honored the director of the campus before he left so people would start talking about his dirty work. It would be easy to say as present politician that we are sorry because the people who were elected back then didn’t do their job, but No.
They won’t say that they are sorry!
Why? Properly because we are only talking troubled children from dysfunction families which are a burden on the society.
We are talking about the politician saying: “Sorry. It is your problem that you were born into that family”
Is that fair?
I don’t believe so, but people in general have a lack of empathy when it comes to troubled children – worldwide!!
Denmark had a broken foster care system back then!
We still have a broken foster care system!
Last year the department of social services in Broenderslev did send a blind social worker who had caught a cold out to such a dysfunctional family. She didn’t notice the clothes of the children falling apart. She didn’t notice diapers not changed for 14 days and old stool integrated in the skin on the legs of the children - All things which neighbors, school and everyone else had seen. This social worker was set up. She has become the fall guy for a dysfunction system. This family had been living in 3 different towns. In every town people had reported them to the social services. Everybody just hoped that they would continue to move on, so they didn’t have to pay for housing these kids to foster care system!
When they then entered the foster care system, the authorities spilt them so they couldn’t start talking with each other and approach them media. So now several kids are alone in the foster system - a system where they could be the unlucky child who will be exposed to sexual abuse every 14 day. Now they cannot even cover for each other!
It is not fair, but we are talking about a system we don’t really want to know anything about.
When Denmarks Radio showed how they worked at Schuberts Minde – another group home in Ringkoebing where a quick search on the internet tell a story about suicide attempts and numerous runways every year, one large newspaper wrote that they shouldn’t have broadcasted it at all.
The appeal system has published a report showing there are errors in 64 percent of the cases where children are removed from their families. Perhaps too many are in the system, so there is not enough time to deal with every single case as much as it matters for the child. Perhaps the money flow demands that a certain number of children just have to be in the system so the social workers can continue to justify their paycheck. I don’t know.
But I do know that the boys from Godhavn should receive an apology. They were failed back then, like so many children are failed today by the same system.
We have to start somewhere to clean up this mesh. An apology to the boys from Godhavn is a good place to start.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Juvenile offenders are punished harder in Denmark than adults
Our Supreme court is reviewing the sentence system for juvenile offenders, because something is wrong with our system.
In a number of cases there have been teens and adults charged with the same crime.
Those who were over 18 then got away with a couple of months while the underaged offenders were given a two year youth sanction. Considering the fact that all may have served time in detention up to the trial the adults could just go free after the trial with time served.
The youth sanction consist of three phases:
There is a lot difference between being locked up for over a year before returning to the local community and then being able to walk right home after the trial.
Fact is that it should be totally opposite. All research states that the brains by teenagers are not fully developed. They are not able to plan long-term like adults. Their crimes are impulse driven.
A country like Denmark should be in the frontline when it comes to both crime prevention and punishing people where it would work.
Warehousing young people for that amount of time in secure detention centers and group homes is not only wrong. It could actually worsen the situation for the teenagers because the teenager may end up being both institutionalized and learning from the other offenders. It is no secret that the Danish penal system is a recruiting base for the gangs responsible for the majority of the armed crime spree which have hit the Danish streets in recent years.
Being tough on crime is not a question of how long we can lock these young people away. It is a matter of stepping in with short but efficient sanctions for anti-social behavior and let the department of social services deal with the long-term treatment in the local community. Warnings don't work. Scared straight don't work. Boot camps don't work. Cooperation between courts and department of social services where the focus is restorative justice is the only path with proven results.
I hope that the state loses in court so the youth sanction can go away and we can start helping the juvenile offenders so the number of victims will be lowered too.
All too often the teenagers who have been through this sanction ends up in adult prison and then the road to recovery will be expensive, hard and long.
Sources:
Højesteret får første sag med 14-årige - Denmarks Radio (In Danish)
Restorative justice - Wikipedia
Examining the Research on Juvenile Programs - Juvenile Justice Bulletin
In a number of cases there have been teens and adults charged with the same crime.
Those who were over 18 then got away with a couple of months while the underaged offenders were given a two year youth sanction. Considering the fact that all may have served time in detention up to the trial the adults could just go free after the trial with time served.
The youth sanction consist of three phases:
- About 2 month in a secure detention center
- 12 months in a open residential treatment center or in a group home based on the economy at the local department of social services
- 10 months with supervision from the local department of social services
There is a lot difference between being locked up for over a year before returning to the local community and then being able to walk right home after the trial.
Fact is that it should be totally opposite. All research states that the brains by teenagers are not fully developed. They are not able to plan long-term like adults. Their crimes are impulse driven.
A country like Denmark should be in the frontline when it comes to both crime prevention and punishing people where it would work.
Warehousing young people for that amount of time in secure detention centers and group homes is not only wrong. It could actually worsen the situation for the teenagers because the teenager may end up being both institutionalized and learning from the other offenders. It is no secret that the Danish penal system is a recruiting base for the gangs responsible for the majority of the armed crime spree which have hit the Danish streets in recent years.
Being tough on crime is not a question of how long we can lock these young people away. It is a matter of stepping in with short but efficient sanctions for anti-social behavior and let the department of social services deal with the long-term treatment in the local community. Warnings don't work. Scared straight don't work. Boot camps don't work. Cooperation between courts and department of social services where the focus is restorative justice is the only path with proven results.
I hope that the state loses in court so the youth sanction can go away and we can start helping the juvenile offenders so the number of victims will be lowered too.
All too often the teenagers who have been through this sanction ends up in adult prison and then the road to recovery will be expensive, hard and long.
Sources:
Højesteret får første sag med 14-årige - Denmarks Radio (In Danish)
Restorative justice - Wikipedia
Examining the Research on Juvenile Programs - Juvenile Justice Bulletin
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Karl Dahl - a little boy denied empathy towards his father
The now 14 year old boy Karl Dahl is a hero. He is a not a troubled teen, but just a boy who used some of his time caring for his father who lost one of his legs.
Although the Danish law allows public funded wheelchairs the city did rather want to remove the boy into foster care where he would face an uncertain future.
The public reacted with an outcry and a wheelchair was delivered to the father so the son could focus on his schooling.
It was two years ago. The department of social services did held held a grudge and waited until the newspapers found other stories to write about. So now they are out hunting for the boy again.
This boy doesn't drink alcohol.
He doesn't do drugs.
His fault is that he cares for his next of kind.
It is a crime in Denmark and for his actions he now have to languishing in foster care until he becomes adult and can be reunited with his father if he is a alive at that time.
Karl Dahl (photos)
Karl tvangsfjernet fra handicappet far (Article in Danish)
Although the Danish law allows public funded wheelchairs the city did rather want to remove the boy into foster care where he would face an uncertain future.
The public reacted with an outcry and a wheelchair was delivered to the father so the son could focus on his schooling.
It was two years ago. The department of social services did held held a grudge and waited until the newspapers found other stories to write about. So now they are out hunting for the boy again.
This boy doesn't drink alcohol.
He doesn't do drugs.
His fault is that he cares for his next of kind.
It is a crime in Denmark and for his actions he now have to languishing in foster care until he becomes adult and can be reunited with his father if he is a alive at that time.
Karl Dahl (photos)
Karl tvangsfjernet fra handicappet far (Article in Danish)
Friday, February 11, 2011
Denmark - victim by so-called professionals?
This blog-entry was first published on our webpage January 13, 2011:
Right now the authorities are looking on every case where they have removed a child from their parents only to place them in foster care or at group homes.
Denmark are known for using over-priced solutions compared with the rest of the Nordic countries. In fact numbers from 2010 did show that most group homes cost about 25 percent more compared with group homes in Sweden and Norway.
But are they better?
No. The number of placements a child removed from the parents at an early age live to reside in is high. Some have been placed in more than 10 places before the reach the age of adulthood.
Also a steady number of scandals hit the entire business every. Cases of abuse, cases of the use of methods which every professional would question.
Denmark is known to be a country where quality is something which are perferred rather than quantity, but when it comes to the decision whether to remove a child from the parents, Denmark is using an old method which does not serve the child best.
Very often the largest department in city order a massive report called the Clause 50 report. Everybody involved in the life of a child (school, kindergarten, therapists, doctor, hospital etc.) are asked what kind of problems they believe a family have. Then it takes months while the case worker tries to incorporate negative wordings in the statement so the department of social service can justify the spendings.
Once the report is finished the case worker present the report to part-time politicians who often have no background or education which enables them to become experts in such cases.
Needless to say that the department of social services often is the both the lawyer and judge in such cases. You just have to ask yourself if you as a parttime politician would go against such a professional case worker, when it is question to serve the child involved in the case in the best possible way.
Of course not, so the case worker is mandated to call some of his or her friends who runs a group home or are qualified to be foster care parents. In Denmark all it take is to copy the mission statement of another group home before you are in business as a group home.
Denmark has been hit by the economy. Never has there been a reason for the politicians to order consultants to review the spendings of the department of social services as now. It would take some courage by the politicians, but it is needed to battle conditions which resembles corruption.
In order countries like the United States it is well known that educational consultants receive massive fees when they refer children to residential treatment options.
Denmark keeps the selection process a secret. It leaves the impression that there are something to hide. The only way to discover whether it is the case is to make a review of the spendings.
It cannot be done too soon. We are talking the lives of the children.
References:
Large fluctuations in youth placements (Videnskab.dk - google translated)
Right now the authorities are looking on every case where they have removed a child from their parents only to place them in foster care or at group homes.
Denmark are known for using over-priced solutions compared with the rest of the Nordic countries. In fact numbers from 2010 did show that most group homes cost about 25 percent more compared with group homes in Sweden and Norway.
But are they better?
No. The number of placements a child removed from the parents at an early age live to reside in is high. Some have been placed in more than 10 places before the reach the age of adulthood.
Also a steady number of scandals hit the entire business every. Cases of abuse, cases of the use of methods which every professional would question.
Denmark is known to be a country where quality is something which are perferred rather than quantity, but when it comes to the decision whether to remove a child from the parents, Denmark is using an old method which does not serve the child best.
Very often the largest department in city order a massive report called the Clause 50 report. Everybody involved in the life of a child (school, kindergarten, therapists, doctor, hospital etc.) are asked what kind of problems they believe a family have. Then it takes months while the case worker tries to incorporate negative wordings in the statement so the department of social service can justify the spendings.
Once the report is finished the case worker present the report to part-time politicians who often have no background or education which enables them to become experts in such cases.
Needless to say that the department of social services often is the both the lawyer and judge in such cases. You just have to ask yourself if you as a parttime politician would go against such a professional case worker, when it is question to serve the child involved in the case in the best possible way.
Of course not, so the case worker is mandated to call some of his or her friends who runs a group home or are qualified to be foster care parents. In Denmark all it take is to copy the mission statement of another group home before you are in business as a group home.
Denmark has been hit by the economy. Never has there been a reason for the politicians to order consultants to review the spendings of the department of social services as now. It would take some courage by the politicians, but it is needed to battle conditions which resembles corruption.
In order countries like the United States it is well known that educational consultants receive massive fees when they refer children to residential treatment options.
Denmark keeps the selection process a secret. It leaves the impression that there are something to hide. The only way to discover whether it is the case is to make a review of the spendings.
It cannot be done too soon. We are talking the lives of the children.
References:
Large fluctuations in youth placements (Videnskab.dk - google translated)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Welcome to this blog
This blog will deal with the issue of the rights of children in Denmark.
February 2011 the Danish government went against the recommendation of the Committee on the Rights of the Child when they stated that they would not create the office of an ombudsman for Children in Denmark.
We find that this decision is wrong and that Danish children need legal aid when their parents are in danger of losing custody.
Our human rights organization based in Sweden at the movement is called Minors in residential placement research center. We work together with other organizations the world over regarding better legal protection of children in our society.
February 2011 the Danish government went against the recommendation of the Committee on the Rights of the Child when they stated that they would not create the office of an ombudsman for Children in Denmark.
We find that this decision is wrong and that Danish children need legal aid when their parents are in danger of losing custody.
Our human rights organization based in Sweden at the movement is called Minors in residential placement research center. We work together with other organizations the world over regarding better legal protection of children in our society.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)