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21 May 2024
How is it possible?
By Olav Terje Bergo
• • • •
This comment originally appeared in Norwegian under Inge Kvaran's article "Barnevernet taper igjen" ([the Child Protection Service] Barnevernet loses again), published in Midtnorsk Debatt on 14 May 2024. (Midtnorsk Debatt is a debate section of the newspaper Adresseavisen, which is published in Trondheim.)
– Both the English and the Norwegian version of Bergo's comment are published here with the author's generous permission.
– About Kvaran, see footnote.
– Translation: Marianne Haslev Skånland
• • • •
How is it possible to be a retired associate professor of child protection social work and at the same time appear so ignorant of the real situation in the Norwegian child protection sector?
It has been thoroughly documented in judgments from the European Court of Human Rights, Norwegian courts, public investigations, research reports, state administrators'/county governors' inspection reports, media reports and municipally organised investigations that the child protection service incessantly makes disastrously wrong decisions to serious detriment of the needs of children and children's families.
I have followed the doings in the child welfare field as a newspaper editor and journalist since the 1970s and it amazes me that a public agency that makes so many and such catastrophic mistakes keeps receiving more and more money from public budgets, despite the fact that it does not seem to lead to any improvement in the decision-making quality of the child welfare services.
It is an elementary lesson in the media that media companies do not improve by being showered with money, without the owners and managers going in with conscious, well-thought-out plans for
• restructuring of the company's core values,
• organisational culture,
• management and leadership quality,
• competence,
• organisation,
etc.
More money for an organisation which is not fundamentally reformed but is allowed to continue making stubbornly wrong decisions in an alarmingly high proportion of the cases they enter into, is not just wasteful. It leads to major problems for the children and families who are exposed to an agency that operates far outside its social function in far too many cases.
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Footnote
Inge Kvaran was a member of the Raundalen committee, which in the presentation of its recommendation NOU 2012-5 claimed, inter alia:
"The committee has not found research-based facts which either support or disprove that growing up with their own biological parents should be of value for children in itself."
and
"The committee recommends that the development-supportive attachment principle take precedence over the biological principle in cases in which the attachment quality and the relational quality are a hindrance to the child's development."
Cf The Raundalen Committee's evaluation of the biological principle, Recommendation NOU 2012-5, and the presentation of the Recommendation (13 November 2020)
and
How Norwegian experts came to reject biological kinship as relevant in child welfare policy (13 October 2017)
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See also
Olav Terje Bergo:
What can elected politicians in Norway do about our child protection system Barnevernet?
MHS's home page, 13 Ocober 2022
– : The stubborn blindness of the defenders of Barnevernet
MHS's home page, 2 March 2019
– : A Bollywood lesson for Norway on humanity
MHS's home page, 31 October 2023
Suranya Aiyar:
Foster care: It's time to think out of the box
MHS's home page, 10 May 2012
Oddvar Espegard:
10 September 2019 at 10 o'clock
MHS's home page, 3 September 2019
Tonje Omdahl:
When the CPS separates siblings as well, they make you lose part of yourself
MHS's home page, 26 July 2021
Kristine Bolstad:
The CPS took everything I had – and smashed it
MHS's home page, 26 July 2021
Ingebjørg Jakobsen:
The Norwegian child protection service Barnevernet – a service which renders help or wields power?
MHS's home page, 12 June 2023
Johannes Idsø:
Child welfare and the abuse of power
MHS's home page, 19 March 2019
Øivind Østberg:
The fight over the future of child protection in Norway is hardening
MHS's home page, 8 March 2020
familien-er-samlet (the-family-is-together):
County boards with quality at an all-time low
MHS's home page, 25 November 2017
– : Flight, exile and taking chances
MHS's home page, 11 November 2020
Marianne Haslev Skånland and familien-er-samlet:
The CPS Barnevernet is now to exercise 'professional love'
MHS's home page, 10 November 2018
Marianne Haslev Skånland:
A child protection case Malaysia / Sweden
MHS's home page, 22 February 2014
– : England – the authorities favour express speed to adopting children away from parents
MHS's home page, 4 December 2014
– : Hillary and Bill Clinton – zealous promoters of forced adoptions in the USA
MHS's home page, 23 Novemer 2020 / 6 July 2021
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