January 2022 – Dark Sweden

These are tips I wish we'd known right at the beginning of our encounters with Social Services. In our first meeting, we thought they could truly help us! These tips are not nessessarily in order of importance, but are all important in ensuring you oblige the authorities to follow the law and act constitutionally- with objectivity, with proportionality and with impatiatlity. 1) Learn the laws A basic starting point is that placed children should be reunited with their parents and if you feel the social services work against you, there are decisions and texts based on the law that can help you strengthen your arguments. The children's best tips are that you can use IVO's decision as an argument when fighting for your children who have been taken by social services. Find relevant laws and quote them to your social workers, ask them to motivate their actions in light of the law and prove to you how they are following the law. https://darksweden.com/lvu-laws-placing-a-child/ When your child is taken under LVU you are given access to a state-paid lawyer. However, the time they are reimbursed by the state doesn't cover even a fraction of the time they would need to spend on your case to ensure all is done legally. You either need to find and fund a lawyer to support you through the process (which is very difficult, becasue there are very few lawyers, from all accounts, who will confront social services on all the steps where they do not follow law.) Or you have to do it yourself. 2) Demand they Social Services follow process Another tip is to read the social services' own handbooks and textbooks for Social workers. It happens quite often that social workers do not follow what they themselves have learned during their education. A lot is done by routine, they complain about stress and lack of working conditions at the social services as a workplace. However, this is not an argument that allows them to lack legal certainty and treat children as objects! Socialstyresen, in an effort of transparency, publishes these documents: Find them on the Swedish Social Board's website, download the PDF and study it in detail. If your Swedish isn't very good, then with Google translate you can translate whole documents, even ones that are 100s of pages long. 3) Record all conversations You, as a parent are likely to be under incredible stress when dealing with social services. It is very difficult to concentrate at times like that. Therefore, do not forget to record all conversations and meetings. There is often a lot that is said and social workers are specialists in misinterpreting what you have said. Many times you probably do not recognize yourself in their notes. If you have recorded the conversation, you can listen to it and refer them to where they have broken down. You can even document serious misconduct through this which is also not uncommon. If you have not recorded the conversations, your words will be relatively weak against an official. In Sweden, there is no law against such recordings, as long as you are also present. 4) Gather documentation Require all papers and files that are written about you, not only from the social services. You can demand from BVC, the police, child psychologist, doctor, school etc. These notes can be a good basis for evidence for your case. The social services often do not contact all authorities during an investigation, they should not investigate more extensively than what they believe is needed. This is both positive and negative, sometimes e.g. BVC paid attention to characteristics of children that the social secretaries are not aware of. They can highlight observations that contradict the social secretaries' imaginary concerns or reports. 5) Communicating with your Social Secretaries When you have a meeting with the social workers, be restrained with what you say and specially the way you say it! Everything can be used against you. Remember, that before an LVU has entered, you have no access to a free lawyer. However, you can record the conversations, or bring a listener, a friend who is sitting together and listening to the conversation. It is best to communicate form of communication is in writing- use email and follow up when you do not get an answer to your question. 6) Work with and not against Social Services! "Work with Soc." Almost everyone will tell you this- your lawyer, the people you reach out to in despair. It is one of the most infuriating sentences you will hear repeatedly. As a parent who feels Social services is interfering unfairly, harming your children this seems impossible! This sentence makes you feel sick. How do you do it then? By listening ... and really listening! What are they actually saying? How, in their mind, can the situation be put right? You can't stop a river from flowing. If you put a dam, it will break soon enough. You can either take away the water that feeds the river or you can divert the river. 7) Never focus on yourself, ALWAYS focus on the Child's best Step outside of your own pride and ego! What is the best for the child: on a macro and micro level? If there is an action that is unhealthy for the child, hightlight that, show how you make it better. 8) Get Consular Support If you are not a Swedish citizen or hold an additional citizenship besides Swedish, then reach out to your consulate. Always do a formal request for support as a citizen, in writing. The role of your embassy is not to interfere in internal matters of Sweden, but to act as an independent observer to ensure that you do not face discrimination and the law is applied in a consititutional way- objectively and proportionally- to you. Some embassies will help, some will close the door firmly. (The Dutch embassy, for example told one family that they believe that Sweden is a democratic country and feel it unnessessary to provide consular support in following a process to ensure legalty.) If you do get help: They can be present at critical meetings, at the least. If they observe irregularities, they can lodge an observation to higher authorities. Help your consular officer- provide an agenda for the meeting and provide them with the laws and processes (with references) that apply to the points you will be discussing. These are some tips, there are certainly more. Feel free to leave a comment with more constructive actions The article originally appeared in Swedish on Barn Gulag as "Tips on fighting against the social services' abuse of power! and has been edited and augemented by our editors, as we learn new information.