Few or many children taken from Lithuanian families in Norway?The child protection services now present a statistic from the official source
Statistisk sentralbyrå (Statistics Norway) showing that children from Lithuania, Latvia and Poland are taken by the Norwegian child protection services
less frequently than Norwegian children:
Litauiske barn overtas sjelden av barnevernet (Lithuanian children are rarely taken over by the CPS)
"Litauen er i harnisk over norske omsorgsovertakelser. Men barn av litauere overtas bare halvparten så ofte som barn av nordmenn, ifølge tall fra barnevernet." (Lithuania is enraged by Norwegian taking into care. But children of Lithuanians are taken into care only half as often as children of Norwegians, according to figures from the CPS.)
Fontene, 17 April 2015
Some comparisons are given:
"• Litauen: 2,8 per 1000
• Latvia: 3,5 per 1000
• Polen: 2,1 per 1000
• Russland: 8,6 per 1000
• Til sammenlikning er det gjennomført omsorgsovertakelse for 6,9 per 1000 norske barn uten innvandrerbakgrun[n].
(Tallene, som gjelder barn innvandret til Norge per 1. januar 2013, ble publisert av Statistisk sentralbyrå i mars 2015)"(• Lithuania: 2.8 per 1000
• Latvia: 3.5 per 1000
• Poland: 2.1 per 1000
• Russia: 8.6 per 1000
• In comparison, taking into care has been done for 6.9 per 1000 Norwegian children with no immigrant background.
(The figures, which pertain children immigrated to Norway per 1 January 2013, were published by Statistisk sentralbyrå in March of 2015) )
Nina Langfeldt has entered a couple of sensible comments in the comment column under the article. It remains to be seen how long such comments, critical to the CPS, are allowed to stand on the website of Fontene, which is the organ of the trade union of child protection workers. In my experience, they have previously been rather resolute in removing criticism.
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The most interesting aspect is probably what these figures will be used for by the child protection circles. The writer of the article not surprisingly points to the surmise in Lithuania that Norway is out to get "healthy" genes for its population. Taken in conjunction with the information of how few Lithuanian children have been taken by the CPS, this is probably aimed at showing how uninformed and unreliable Lithuanians are about Norwegian child protection, plus reassure Lithuanians about Norwegian CPS.
However, it seems natural to turn one's thoughts about numbers around somewhat:
When it comes to CPS questions, business as usual on the part of all Norwegian authorities and authority-subservient groups, such as the Ministry, politicians and the CPS themselves, is to refuse to discuss single, concrete cases. If challenged on this point so that they have to answer, they claim to be protecting the family and in particular the children. Whether the family publicises its side of the case or not, while the authorities keep silence, an implicit allegation is conveyed of shameful things having passed in the family, of the family keeping these shameful matters secret, and of the children as being ashamed of their family.
This is rarely the reality. Most CPS victims are loving families who want to be together, and the result for the children of the "care" and "help" of the CPS is generally very bad. The CPS actions against children and families is the shameful fact and our authorities and our politicians, who protect and boost these child protection services are the ones who ought to be ashamed.
Realistic exposure of the destinies of all the families affected is prevented by official Norway refusing to face concrete facts about single cases, and relying instead on figures and general arguments. When, for example, the number of children taken into care increases, the impression conveyed without words is that the reason lies in more and more parents being violent, abusive or drug addicts, or else that the CPS are succeeding in exposing more and more such cases in which children have a horrible time at home. The reality is probably rather that increases are due to the CPS receiving even more political, legal and other support to take children, support given in extreme trust in the CPS's assessments always being "in the best interest of the child" and their account always being truthful, and that parents are on principle unimportant for their children.
Of course, it is in reality quite revealing that there are, parallel to the steady increase in CPS actions, an increase in compensation arrangements for "former children in CPS care who have been exposed to abuse and neglect" both in the CPS's private foster homes and in CPS institutions. The time limits for what is accepted as "former" har been drawing steadily closer; in some districts they cover cases up to some years into the 2000s. But Norwegian ideology about our own excellence is not concerned to reveal anything.
The fact that Norwegian authorities carry out their "protection" of children in this way give Lithuanians an extra opportunity to understand what conditions are like in Norway: The way Gabrielius and his family are being treated, the way
the 9-year-old Lithuanian girl and her mother have been treated, that is the way an even larger percentage of children of Norwegian descent are treated. They are comforting the Lithuanians by telling them that there are relatively fewer of them who are treated like that than there are of Norwegian children.
Lithuanians should not let themselves be appeased by any suggestion that this should be some kind of proof that Norwegian CPS is sensible, humane, beneficial or favourable to children, or that they "only take children away from their family when
absolutely necessary and after every other kind of help has been attempted".
Two interesting pieces of information have recently come my way:
(a) In Estonia people have begun to question the advance of Western style child protection in their country. They are apparently concerned that ideas of "what kind of conditions a child ought to be offered" leads or will lead to the CPS taking children from poor people. – Their fear is entirely realistic.
(b) Lithuanian media has apparently reported that six families, originally from Lithuania but having lived in Norway for some time, have lately left Norway because they have been approached by Norwegian CPS. – It sounds as very sensible realism. If only Norwegian families too would leave the country in time!
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