Thursday letter
06/11/2019
- Protest around the world part 2 -
#Dec7Protest
#Dec7Protest
See earlier post in this series: Around the world: Denmark
See where in the world you can join the global protest on December 7th: Overview
L
The story itself and the Norwegian Child Care (Barnevernet) is so extensive and interesting a theme that books can be written about it which has also become. For example, Steven Benneth has written the book, Stolen Childhood: The truth about Norway's child welfare system.
What we see in Norway is broadly a shift from external control to internal control at the transition to the child-centered approach that began in 1992. The concept of the "inadequate parent" was introduced here together with a number of ways of identifying the "inadequate parent" and an idea that by intervening early and radically and removing children, the child could be secured a new and healthier connection with some foster parents or adoptive parents, thus giving the child better conditions for a healthy and good development.
All that we have of research suggests that this theory (a variation of attachment theory) is simply wrong and that there will be far more unhappy fates on the basis of that type of effort than there will be happy. At the same time as working with the wrong premise in the theoretical approach, it is an approach that is extremely easy to manipulate. That is, people who have an interest in the child being in care which could be foster families, or psychologists or private providers of institutions have an ease time in proving that the child needs to be in care. The last problem is the legal system that should ensure quality. This legal system in Norway has proven to be totally without justice. In Norway, a court system has been developed where the court protects the interests of the state / municipality and where it is entirely a matter of luck if a citizen gets at decent treatment.
Child removal hase become a kind of power tool. A way to keep the wheels of society going and provide employment for a huge state employed staff (Norway has the world's largest amount of state employed measured per capita)
At the same time, Norway has had an incredibly strong and good resistance movement against the unfair system. Some very strong personalities 10 years ago have already started to point out that we had a serious problem here and that we could actually talk about child theft and deliberate family splitting strategies implemented by the state / municipality
Norway is currently experiencing a severe crisis in this particular area as the human rights court on September 10 gave Norway a crushing defeat for its child protection practice in a grand chamber case of a mother who had her child forcibly adopted in 2011 (Strand Lobben v. Norway). At the same time, the court has admitted the 35 additional child care cases for treatment.
A few pictures from Norway's demonstration in Oslo on September 7, 2019
ast Thursday I started a tour of some of the countries participating in the global protest against the family splitting childcare (Which we have also called "Barnevernet Ideologi")
I started by looking at the situation in my own country Denmark.
This time, I will look at four other countries that have all announced their participation in the demonstration on 7 December 2019 and who also participated in the demonstration on 7 September 2019.
It is from north to south Norway, Lithuania, Austria and Bulgaria.
Norway
Norway is in many ways the starting point for the whole international protest. The international demonstration on September 7 was launched by activists in Bulgaria. It came about that the Bulgarian government had adopted an 11-year plan to introduce the Norwegian principles of child protection in Bulgaria. Norway has been stubborn in its efforts to spread its childcare principles to other countries, especially poor countries in Eastern Europe. Norway has given massive support to many of these countries and at the same time demanded that they adapt their childcare according to Norwegian principlesThe story itself and the Norwegian Child Care (Barnevernet) is so extensive and interesting a theme that books can be written about it which has also become. For example, Steven Benneth has written the book, Stolen Childhood: The truth about Norway's child welfare system.
What we see in Norway is broadly a shift from external control to internal control at the transition to the child-centered approach that began in 1992. The concept of the "inadequate parent" was introduced here together with a number of ways of identifying the "inadequate parent" and an idea that by intervening early and radically and removing children, the child could be secured a new and healthier connection with some foster parents or adoptive parents, thus giving the child better conditions for a healthy and good development.
All that we have of research suggests that this theory (a variation of attachment theory) is simply wrong and that there will be far more unhappy fates on the basis of that type of effort than there will be happy. At the same time as working with the wrong premise in the theoretical approach, it is an approach that is extremely easy to manipulate. That is, people who have an interest in the child being in care which could be foster families, or psychologists or private providers of institutions have an ease time in proving that the child needs to be in care. The last problem is the legal system that should ensure quality. This legal system in Norway has proven to be totally without justice. In Norway, a court system has been developed where the court protects the interests of the state / municipality and where it is entirely a matter of luck if a citizen gets at decent treatment.
Child removal hase become a kind of power tool. A way to keep the wheels of society going and provide employment for a huge state employed staff (Norway has the world's largest amount of state employed measured per capita)
At the same time, Norway has had an incredibly strong and good resistance movement against the unfair system. Some very strong personalities 10 years ago have already started to point out that we had a serious problem here and that we could actually talk about child theft and deliberate family splitting strategies implemented by the state / municipality
Norway is currently experiencing a severe crisis in this particular area as the human rights court on September 10 gave Norway a crushing defeat for its child protection practice in a grand chamber case of a mother who had her child forcibly adopted in 2011 (Strand Lobben v. Norway). At the same time, the court has admitted the 35 additional child care cases for treatment.
A few pictures from Norway's demonstration in Oslo on September 7, 2019
Lithuania
In Lithuania, the situation is very close to what we see in Bulgaria. Norway has been in favor of subsidizing the social system and there have been Norwegian delegations in Lithuania and teaching case workers on the Norwegian principles of child protection. It is felt that authorities have a much lower threshold for taking children from parents today than they had earlier. It may be a parent who has used a mild degree of corporal punishment on his child or it may be other very insignificant things that lead to intervention. You also see here that there are interests in play. Someone may want revenge and therefore report a family others may have interests in having a child etc.
Lithuania has a small strong and well-organized resistance movement which demonstrated on 7 September and which will also demonstrate on 7 December.
Austria
The demonstrations that have taken place in Vienna have been primarily run by the association Step up 4 childrens rights. The movement is based on a Christian foundation and therefore emphasizes family values. The demonstrations in Vienna have not so much been aimed at Austrian conditions, but have been directed against Norway and have been direct criticism of Norway's way of acting when it comes to child protection. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures from the demonstration in Vienna on September 7, but as I understand it it was a small well organized demonstration with a 20 - 25 participants.
Bulgaria
Bulgaria is a chapter in it's own. Bulgaria has a great history when it comes to the fight for human rights. During World War II, they were good at caring for the vulnerable Jewish population and refugees and where the Norwegian family-splitting childcare is being introduced into their system, a completely overwhelming resistance movement has arisen. There are more than 200,000 members in the Facebook group who are gathering opposition to Norwegian childcare principles. Many demonstrations are being conducted and there have been 150,000 people in the streets for some of these demonstrations.
Here are some pictures from Bulgaria from the demonstration on September 7, 2019
Ingen kommentarer:
Send en kommentar