We are living the absurdity of the Swedish social services system: where the, legally defined, aim is family reunification as soon as possible. Yet, we experience, that Social Services pay lip service to trying to maintain ties with the children, and in the meantime, do EVERYTHING within their power to drag out the process and to alienate and distance children from their parents.
Let’s look at some facts about what has happened with regards to the timeline (to date, day 85, Christmas Eve 2020) and the evidence we see about social services dragging out the process and increasingly limiting contact
Dragging the process out
It is written in the laws that social services should act fast when dealing with cases involving children.
Delays to the officially set timelines
The timescales of Social work is set out by laws.
Yet, our case has suffered delays beyond these legally defined deadlines even. The reason for our delays was that the social services were not able to fulfill its legal obligation to provide translations of all the documents they submitted to the administrative court. The court hearing was delayed by over 2 weeks for this reason alone. Yet, we still, to this date- one month later-, have not received the translation of all documentation social services have submitted in our case!
It took social service over 1 month to translate a 63 page document- their investigation, conclusion and care plan for each child- to Hungarian and Dutch. This long timescale was despite the documents containing lots of repetition. The translated documents were not quality checked: there are paragraphs missing from the translation, the names of children of confused in the translation.
Despite the delays in court proceedings with the excuse of the delay in translation, these substandard translations were provided to us only 24-58 hours before our court appearance.
No actionable plan given
We are on Day 85 and until Day 77 (16 December 2020) we had received NO PLAN for a potential reunification!
Under the current plan, we move to a different team of social workers, the security planning team, who will work with us for 6 months to a year before the children can come home.
We were told on Day 77 that we may start this process on Day 111 (19 January 2021). A whole 3.5 months after the children were placed with strangers!
When we have asked, and we have asked verbally and in writing, since Day 17 (16 October 2020) about when and how we can get the children home, we have been repeatedly told that “it depends“. Furthermore, it depends on us satisfying a copied and pasted statement about providing a safe and secure home where the children are protected from violence and harsh physical punishment (something that is and was already true of our home) – providing no concrete details.
On our first meeting after coming out of custody (Day 17), I naively asked whether we would be allowed to visit my in-laws in the Netherlands over the “Sport break (Sport Lov)” (although I actually meant to say autumn break (Host Lov) which was only 2 weeks away). The social worker responded with a “Maybe”. Never, in my most terrifying nightmares, would I have thought that we’d be missing out on Christmas, Easter, Midsommer, Host Lov, Sport Lov, Summer holidays and all of the family’s birthdays, weddings and wedding anniversaries and other family celebrations, as of the timeline we are now facing!
With aging parents this timeline, especially, fills us with horror.
So the full timescale we are looking at is 9 months minimum to return home, since the children have been placed with strangers. I ask how can this level of destabilisation, this level of ignoring the significance of family- loving parents- in a child’s life can be warranted?
Frequency of meeting the children
When the objective is family reunification, you would expect that frequent, good contact is promoted between the parents and the children.
We are only allowed to see the children, under supervised contact, for 1 hour every 2 weeks.
And by all accounts we are lucky! Some families we’ve got to know have not seen their kids for a year!
“The scheduled visitations are every other Monday for one hour at [the limited company offices contracted by the local authority to provide foster homes]. Since the focus of the care is to protect the children there is still a need for supervised visitation and that the language used is English so that everybody involved can understand each other.
All children will be invited to join at the visitations. If a child expresses they do not want to take part, the social services will try and find out if there is anything that can be done to help the child feel good about participating in the visitation. If/when the social services see changes being made, based on what is stated in the care plan, the visitations can be evaluated and changes made.“
Sounds all reasonable, right? It would be, if the care wasn’t totally disproportionate to the “crimes” two of our children have claimed.
Limiting contact over the phone
In our case, we have been threatened twice that if I don’t talk less with the boys my contact will be limited.
Then, just as Christmas holidays started, they formalised contact restrictions.
Contact limits with Steve
After we had first met the boys – on Day 29 into this ordeal -, we started talking with them on the phone. They were so happy to be able to be in touch!
From the first conversation, I noticed they had changed. It took me a good week and a half to be able to get Steve to open up more and realise we are here to stay, albeit at a distance, for the time being. With that feeling of security, he began to express his wishes- to go home- towards his foster family;
Also in that timeframe, my poor child had not only lost his brother, from beside him to another foster home but was not allowed to see friends or have a film night with friends in those few weeks.
At the same time as the foster family seemed keen for him to not stir any waters, just be a TV or tablet zombie.
When I raised issues with Social Services:
Steve “told us us:
– On Saturday he got breakfast at noon, just as we were finishing talking, as the family was only getting up then. He could be on the TV/ Console till the older boy at the home got up, c. 10:00.
– Saturday afternoon/evening he was dropped off at a family member (with an 8-10 year-ish boy and a 3 year old little one) while the host family went out. He got back to the home late, around 23:00. (All this while 2 weeks earlier he was not allowed to go over to a friend’s for a movie night citing COVID restrictions.)
– On Sunday, the whole host family only woke at around noon again. They’d promised to take him to the hairdresser… it didn’t happen.
Is this normal? Is this an acceptable standard of care? My child is not used to this and said he is bored.”
After this, instead of addressing the issues I raised, I got an email from Social Services:
“We understand from the family home consultant that your son has been having long conversations with you over the phone. We will have conversations with both the family home and your son about how this affects him. We have had indications that his behavior has changed negatively in the family home after the contact between you increased. If this the case we will have to talk about how much and for how long your conversations can be and for the benefit of the children and their well being we might have to limit them.“
They ignored the facts that on Day 30 his best friend and brother Anton was removed from his family home and placed with his sister instead. This also resulted in changes of routines at the family home (no more real stories prior to bedtime – “what I like most” of being there), and leaving Steve totally isolated from everything and everyone he knew (except his school and the call with his mother). My child has called me, cried and poured his heart out.
At one point he texted me “Well, this morning they tipped me over and I’m fed up with having a person watching me every second of every day”.
Contact limits with Anton
Anton got his first phone, an old Nokia, on Day 44. He’s 8 years old and wants to talk to us daily, but we were only able to do it via Gabby’s phone till then. He had a little difficulty using his phone initally, but eventually got the hang of it.
In the past weeks, Gabby has spiralled down- we’ve tried to keep people on their toes to protect her. (This was seen as interfering.) However, Anton got caught up in it, because it was him casually mentioning to me that his sister wasn’t home yet at times when she should’ve been under close supervision.
After a conversation with our social worker (8 Dec), who stated that I’m calling him many times and then talk for over an hour to Anton, I wanted to be transparent and sent her the following:
“I found it hard to believe that I have talked that many times over an hour, so checked my call records: most of the times it is Anton calling and I call him back. This has been the case since he has learned to use his phone better. The longest calls I’ve had with Anton since he’s had his phone
- 3 Dec, starting 18:51 for 1 hour and 2 minutes- I called him
- 24 Nov starting 20:42 for 50 minutes- Anton called me
- 4 Dec starting 20;08 for 44 minutes – I called him
- 1 Dec starting 19:23 for 44 minutes – Anton called me
- 22 Nov starting 16:52 for 36 minutes – Anton called me
- 2 Dec starting 16:47 for 25 minutes- Anton called me
So yes, there are some long calls in there and I would certainly like it if Anton was in bed and preferably asleep around 20:00, but it’s not something we can do anything about. He calls me so late on many nights and we do adapt the length of reading to the time of the evening, his mood (if he has had a bad day, then we’ll read a little longer) and whether it is school the following day. Yesterday, for example, 7 Dec, he called at 20:45 and we spoke for 4 mins and 28 secs (we talked about school) + 20 minutes and 3 secs (on my callback for the story)
In the first 2 weeks of Anton having a phone, my records also show many unconnected calls (especially those during more sociable hours and outside mealtimes).
Wasn’t the problem in Steve’s previous jourhem [fosterhome] the same: the child is missing meals and not getting involved because we talk “too much”? And wasn’t this raised, in a similar way, after we had voiced concerns about the standard of care?“
As you see I was being transparent, I had even offered to share my call records with them.
NO ANSWER from Social Services to my questions. Instead, 3 days later, they leave it to my 8-year old, who sobs as he tells me that he is no longer allowed to talk to me every evening.
This system uses my 8 year old child as a messenger for news that is devastating for both of us!
Then me again (Day 71, 10 December 2020): “Just a very quick question: I learned tonight [from Anton] that he is now only allowed to talk with me for 15 minutes, every other day.
Additionally, he had told me his phone is being confiscated and switched off. He is not able to talk to other family members either.
May I ask, are these your -Social Service’s- decisions?”
The next day we receive a message:
“The social service have made an assessment that we strongly recommend a limitation in the phone calls with your son. The family home has made it known to us that the phone calls often can be several times per day for long periods of time. This affects your son, he gets angry, tired and fragmented. He needs a calm and stable environment. It is, therefore, our strong recommendation that you limit the phone calls to once every other day for a maximum of 20 minutes. If you as parents do not agree with this we have the possibility of restraining the contact as a part of the LVU-process with a formal decision, “umgängesbegränsning”.”
Now lets look at the facts:
- my 8-year old is going to bed way too late- 21:00-22:00. Of course, he gets angry, tired and fragmented. (That’s not even taking into account that he is away from home with strangers and is getting way too much unsupervised YouTube access.)
- my 8-year old has cried to me on the phone a couple of times about some injustice he feels happened or when his sister took his phone and then threw it at him.
- my 8-year old calls me himself closer to 9 pm. I have tried to call him earlier, but find the phone switched off. He tells me the foster home takes his phone and switches it off. They only give it back at bedtime so he can set an alarm.
- Our calls: We chat for a couple of minutes about how each other’s days have been and then I read a bedtime story to him for about 15-20 minutes (the time it takes to read a chapter in “How to train your dragon”, which we just finished)
- No other friends or family can reach Anton either:
He is isolated, not given an opportunity to be exposed to his home languages or cultures. I know it’s a big ask to find any other family in the area (besides us) who also speaks his home languages (Hungarian and Dutch), but he isn’t able to speak his first language – English – which is also the language he gets taught in at school, as the family’s English is not good enough.
I am trying, within my power, to provide my child with stability and reassurance and this is the sort of retaliation we get!
Current status regarding contact
“The social services see that there is a lot of contact between the children and the parents. We see it fit that the parents speak to the children via telephone every other day for a maximum of 20 minutes, and no later than 21:00. The limit in the conversations is based on what the family homes tell us about the childrens reactions to the longer phone calls and the childrens ability to participate in the daily life and routines of the family homes. If this is not complied with, the social services have the possibility of restraining the contact as a part of the LVU-process with a formal decision, “umgängesbegränsning” if we see it necessary.”
We received this on Day 82, the first day of the children’s Christmas break, when they are even more isolated from family and friends.
A broken system
It is a strange system, in my view, where the objective is family reunification, yet all actions are towards distancing parents and parental alienation.
The manuals, based on which the Swedish Social Services operate, advise that the parental contact should be limited in order for the child to settle better into the foster homes.
As someone who has raised my children with lots of change, travel and building resilience, I cannot understand the approach of social services. In all my parenting, I have always looked at stabilising factors, especially when they were faced with changes- big or small. I have held up a routine, we have decided things together.
In my view, it is a weird and utterly twisted system, where the objective is reunification, yet all actions are towards alienation.