*
27 August 2018
Marianne Haslev Skånland:
Some professional child experts (1)
Kari Killén, social worker and dr.philos
Translations from Norwegians are mine.
The network KIB does not appear to have given themselves an official English title.
MHS
In Killén's well-known textbook Sveket – Omsorgssvikt er alles ansvar (Having been let down – Care failure is everybody's responsibility), Kommuneforlaget, 2nd edition 1994, one can find many formulations showing clearly incorrect beliefs about human qualities and reactions in parents and children, and there is a lack of insight into what the behaviour and actions of the Norwegian CPS establishment and CPS workers cause in the way of reactions. The importance and value of preserving the bonds of love between children and parents, and of letting them stay together and belong together, even if they as individuals are full of defects, is usually not mentioned. Some examples:
Page 176:
"Foreldre i omsorgssviktsituasjoner vil som oftest forsøke å ta vare på seg selv, blant annet ved bagatellisering, benekting og projisering. De etablerer strategier rettet mot å opprettholde autonomi (Christiansen 1993)."
(Parents in situations of care failure will usually try to take care of themselves, e.g through trivialising, denial and projection. They establish strategies directed towards maintaining autonomy (Christiansen 1993).)
Killén has often spoken of selfishness and 'trivialising', which she holds characterise parents' attitude to their own faults. She has not spoken of how CPS workers and the authorities are continually trivialising their own actions, in CPS cases where the results have been exposed as catastrophic. They usually make do with general statements: "Everybody can make mistakes, but ...", "This is food for thought", "We will make use these experiences in learning, so that we become a better service".
This method can be recognised from Killén's books.
Page 306:
"Det kan ofte være nødvendig for oss bevisst å frustrere foreldre for å gjøre det mulig å vurdere denne meget vesentlige funksjonen. Hvis foreldre viser meget begrenset frustrasjonstoleranse ved vår tilstedeværelse, må vi undre oss over hvordan den kan være i en situasjon uten sosial kontroll, der ingen andre er til stede enn foreldrene og barnet."
(It is often necessary for us to deliberately frustrate the parents to make it possible to evaluate this very important function. If parents show very limited capacity for frustration toleration when we are present, we have to doubt how it functions in a situation without social control, when nobody else is present except the parents and the child.)
Comments seem largely unnecessary about this 'method', which should long ago have made Norwegian authorities alarmed in relation to Article 3 of The European Convention on Human Rights, which forbids torture.
Page 577-78:
"Fosterforeldre kan, som alle oss andre, bedre se vanskelighetene når de hjelpes til å holde fast i det positive de representerer.
Grupper av fosterforeldre kan være en god støtte. Deltakerne er i samme båt; de kan støtte hverandre, føle seg forstått og lære av hverandre. De er ressursrike mennesker."
(Foster parents can, like all of us, see the difficulties better when they are helped to hold on to the positive they represent.
Groups of foster parents can be a good support. The participants are in the same boat; they can support one another, feel understood, and learn from one another. They are resourceful people.)
"Eksempel: ..... Fosterforeldrene selv følte seg etter hvert "desperate av angst". De kom med i en nyetablert gruppe for fosterforeldre. "Hadde det ikke vært for gruppen, hadde vi gitt opp og sendt henne tilbake." Barnet er i dag adoptert av fosterforeldrene. Hun er blitt 10 år og har en trygg tilknytning til fosterforeldrene."
(Example: .... The foster parents themselves came to feel "desperate with anxiety". They got into a recently established group for foster parents. "If it had not been for the group, we would have given up and sent her back." The child has now adopted by the foster parents. She has reached 10 years of age and has a secure attachment to the foster parents.)
It is not at all doubtful what the CPS, who make use of Killén's opinions on many things, would have concluded about biological parents, if these had told them of something similar: that they had become desperate with anxiousness over their child's behaviour and had been on the verge of sending the child to be adopted away.
"Tilbakeføring har vist seg å være svært uheldig (Daro 1988, Veland 1993). ...
Dette er ikke til å undre seg over. Vi venter svært lenge med å plassere barn i fosterhjem. Det har som oftest vært investert gjennom flere år på omfattende vis i "forebyggende" tiltak. Når barnet endelig plasseres, er omsorgssituasjonen meget dårlig og foreldrenes utviklingsmuligheter svært begrensede.
Barnet vil dessuten ha etablert en tilknytning til fosterforeldrene og ha utviklet noen forventninger til voksne om å bli tatt godt vare på. Dette, og sorgen over å skulle forlate fosterforeldrene, vil uunngåelig skape problemer i forhold til foreldrene. Foreldrene på sin side, som har opplevd nederlaget over å ha blitt fratatt barnet, vil være sensitive overfor å bli avvist, og vil sannsynligvis ha mye aggresjon i seg som barnet kan stå i fare for å utløse."
(To return the child has turned out to be very unfortunate (Daro 1988, Veland 1993). .....
This is no wonder. We wait for a very long time before we place children in foster homes. Usually investments in 'preventive' measures have been made during several years in a comprehensive way. When at last the child is placed, the situation of care is very bad and the parents' developmental possibilities are very limited.
Besides, the child has established an attachment to the foster parents and has developed some expectations of adults taking good care of them. This, and the grief of having to leave the foster parents, will inevitably make problems in the relationship to their parents. The parents, on their side, who have experienced the defeat of having had the child remoed, will be sensitive to being rejected, and will probably have a lot of pent-up aggression which the child can be in danger of triggering.)
The different view of foster parents and what should be done for them, and real parents and the treatment and assessment they should receive, is striking. The same attitude seems to be present here:
Page 497:
"Foreldrene bør engasjeres når det gjelder reduksjon av ytre belastninger, for eksempel økonomiske problemer og boligproblemer. Å løse problemene er dårlig omsorg."
(Parents should be made to become involved regarding reduction of external strain, e.g economic problems and housing problems. To solve the problems is bad care (bad social work).)
It should be noted that arrangements are quite often made to provide foster parents with extra extra economic resource to 'solve' special problems. There are examples that they have been granted money to build extra rooms on their house to accommodate foster children, and extra to buy a second car in order to drive several foster children to different kindergartens.
Page 557:
(When children are to be placed out of the home):
"Det vil ofte være nødvendig å bruke faglig autoritet for å engasjere foreldrene i sorgarbeid. Det er en smertefull prosess som mange vil vegre seg mot. Hvis vi følger foreldrenes forsvar, enten det fremtrer som benekting, bagatellisering eller distansering, hjelper vi dem bare på kort sikt.
......
De foreldre som ikke er i stand til å gi sine barn en god nok omsorgssituasjon, er sjelden i stand til å sørge sammenhengende gjennom noen tid."
(It will often be necessary to make use of professional authority to engage parents in grieving-activity. It is a painful process which many will shy away from. If we go with the parents' defense, whether it manifests itself as denial, trivialising or distancing, we only help them in a short perspective.)
Side 118:
(About children's reaction when they are taken from their parents):
"Hvor ille hjemmesituasjonen enn er, har barnet en form for tilknytning der, og en eventuell separasjon fra den vil være ambivalent. Behovet for å sørge er der, men ofte er barnet ikke i stand til å sørge før senere. Ofte kompliseres sorgprosessen for barnet ved idealiseringen av de tapte foreldrene. De er ikke i stand til å hanskes med sin skuffelse og aggresjon overfor foreldrene, og idealiserer dem isteden. På lengre sikt dreier det seg heller ikke nødvendigvis kun om sorgen over det tapte, men sorgen over at det ikke var noe der å tape."
(However bad the situation at home is, the child has a form of attachment there, and a possible separation from it will be ambivalent. The need to grieve is there, but the child is often not able to grieve until later. Frequently, the grieving-process is being complicated for the child by idealising the lost parents. They are not able to cope with their disappointment and aggression against the parents, and instead they idealise them. Nor is it in the long run necessarily just the sorrow over what is lost, but the sorrow because there was nothing there to lose.)
A rather clearly mechanical-deterministic 'explanation', explaining very little and distorting much. Killén is generally a fairly obvious behavioristic social scientist, of materialistic calibre: Only external environment and outer factors matter; any deep, biologically based relation, independent of whether external factors and happenings are 'satisfactory', are considered unimportant or non-existent.
*
The 'frustration technique' which child protection workers are recommended to use against parents, and also the warning against giving aid to relieve economic proglems, have been commented on here:
Marianne Haslev Skånland:
The assessments made by the Norwegian child protection service (CPS)
MHS's home page, 5 February 2012
Killéns 'strain factors' or 'risk indicators', carried further in 'the Kvello model' (Kvello is another writer of CPS textbook literature), furnish social workers with a method which is in extensive use in these last two decades. The method gives a type of automatic 'classification' which is typically deterministic (cf How Norwegian experts came to reject biological kinship as relevant in child welfare policy), 13 October 2017.
The use of such criteria has been described in chapter 4: "Barnevernets behandling og vurderinger" (The case work and assessments of Barnevernet) in
Åge Simonsen:
Håndbok for klientutvalg og barnevernsofre
(Handbook for client committees and child protection victims) from 1996, 2nd edition 2003.
From chapter 4, quoted from Anne Aarskog:
"I barnevernsdokumenter og sakkyndige uttalelser møter man en begrepsverden som viser seg hovedsakelig å stamme fra Kari Killén."
(In CPS documents and expert reports one meets a conceptual world which turns out to stem in large measure from Kari Killén.)
"Metoden Killén utvikler består i å beskrive foreldrenes bakgrunn, personlighet og deres forhold til barna ved hjelp av en rekke egenskaper kalt belastningsfaktorer. De brukes, skriver Killén, “i analysen av kasus til å betegne faktorer som kan ha vært disponerende, bidragende, forsterkende og/eller utløsende".
I sin bestrebelse etter å skape et forfinet prediksjonsinstrument vurderes egenskapene enkeltvis etter en nærmere angitt poengskala. Visse belastningsfaktorer anses å ha større prediksjonsverdi enn andre, men totalsummen som en person oppnår vil være med på å avgjøre om barnevernsarbeideren anser at barnet bør tas under omsorg. Som Killén skriver: “Jo flere belastningsfaktorer jo dårligere foreldrefunksjoner”. "
(The method worked out by Killén consists in describing the parents' background, personality and relation to their children by means of a series of factors called 'strain factors'. They are employed, Killén writes, "i analysen av kasus til å betegne faktorer som kan ha vært disponerende, bidragende, forsterkende og/eller utløsende" (in the analysis of cases to denote factors which may have played a predisposing, contributing, intensifying and/or triggering role.)
In her attempt to create a subtle predictive instrument, the factors are considered one at a time according to an indicated weight scale. Some strain factors are considered to have greater predicational value than others, but the sum total characterising a person will play a significant role in determining whether the social worker considers that the child should be taken into care. As Killén writes: "Jo flere belastningsfaktorer jo dårligere foreldrefunksjoner" (The more strain factors the worse parental function).)
About Killén's doctoral thesis:
"Killéns avhandling grunner seg på en undersøkelse av 19 barn som ble innlagt på Barneavdelingen ved Ullevål Sykehus året 1978/79 med spørsmål om de led under vanskjøtsel og/eller var blitt påført fysisk skade. I to tilfeller kunne man utelukke en slik form for omsorgssvikt. Disse to tilfellene fungerer som kontrollgruppe i undersøkelsen."
(Killén's doctoral thesis is based on a study of 19 children who were committed to the pedriatic ward at Ullevål Hospital in the year 1978/79, to clarify if they were suffering from neglect and/or had been subject to physical abuse. In two cases these kinds of care failure could be excluded. These two cases function as a comparison group in the study.)
A brief explanation of 'strain factors' or 'risk indicators' is found here:
Åge Simonsen:
Norwegian child protection hits immigrants hard
MHS's home page, 10 November 2017
The website BarnasRett.no has a folder containing a collection of articles about Kari Killén:
Dr.philos Kari Killén
– sentral leverandør av lærebøker og foredrag til de barne"faglige" profesjonene
(Dr.philos Kari Killén
– a central provider of textbooks and lectures for the "child-expert" professions)
*
Kari Killén is a member of KIB – Kompetansenettverket Kvalitet i Barnevern (The competence network Quality in Child Protection).
She did in 2016 say in a program on national tv that Barnevernet had failed. But the failure seemed, according to her, to consist of Barnevernet not having been able to remedy the psychological problems held in several reports and statistics to be prevalent with children brought up in CPS care. Killén thought that more psychiatry should be incorporated into child protection work. It did not seem to have been in her thoughts that maybe the CPS itself, through their forced dissolution of children's families by separating the children from their parents, has caused the marked over-representation of psychological problems.
She has later said that Barnevernet has to little professional competence.
She has not said or written anything indicating a changed view of parents, of foster homes and foster parents being a boon for children, about strain/risk indicators, or related issues.
The profession competence she wants to see an increase of, seems to be of the same kind she has argued for earlier. She is now a popular lecturer in different professional circles.
**
Some professional child experts
27 August 2018 –
*