On 30 January, 2012, a Norwegian mother agreed to a voluntary placement for her two children, born in 2007 and 2009, with the children’s grandmother after rumours of a possible sexual assault by a stranger.
On 22 February, 2012, Norway’s Child Welfare Services/System (NCWS), Barnevernet, made an ’emergency decision’ and by force, they placed the mother’s two children with their father.
On 15 November, 2012, the mother gave birth to a baby girl. The next day, only 14 hours later, Norway’s Child Welfare Services made another ’emergency decision’ and by force placed the mother’s baby daughter into foster care.
On 27 March, 2013, the County Court of Nedre Telemark, Norway, issued a judgement instructing NCWS to hand the two oldest children back to their mother gradually over three months.
The mother remarried in 2015 to a wonderful man, and the children now live with their mother and her new husband. They also had a baby boy at the end of 2015.
Their baby girl has still not been returned to the family based on a decision made on 18 June, 2015, by an administrative tribunal and on 5 January, 2016 by the County Court of Nedre Telemark.
Norway’s Child Welfare System (NCWS) want you and me to think that mistakes are made by them, just like any other business. They say that it’s because the profession is demanding and staff are often quite young, unskilled and don’t have much life experience.
Is this true? Partly, but the countless complaints from mothers and fathers in particular, but also from brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, sons, daughters and cousins etc. shows that these are not mistakes.
Norway’s Child Welfare System (NCWS) do have a demanding job and an important task but the biggest problem we see with this system is that children will be taken away from their family without any good reason (purely trivial reasons). Mistakes are of course made but what we find with NCWS in a very large majority of cases is systematic error/systematic abuse from the authorities towards perfectly able and caring parents.
Arnfinn Wiksaas wrote an article in Avisa Norland in March 2016. He states.
“It is incomprehensible that the government will give a pension to all foster parents. Each foster carer earns around 480,000 Kroner per year. In addition, they receive child benefit, and in many cases special support measures are paid for, with the extra amount tax free. When the child reaches 18 months old, the foster carer can put the child into Kindergarten and go to full-time employment. It is not uncommon that couples with foster children can earn over one million Kroner (ca. €100,000) per year. It is also not uncommon for foster carers to leave their jobs as it is often convenient and more lucrative. Many foster carers are reluctant to adopt a child because they will lose their main support. The Norwegian State pays on average around one million Kroner per child, per year, in care – around half goes to the foster carer and the other half goes to NCWS, administration expenses and lawyers etc.”
The family continue to fight to get their four year old daughter home for Christmas. Please pray for Charlotte and Ståle and their entire family.
Norwegian attorneys for human rights related cases, attention!
One of the major flaw in the Norwegian legislation and legal processes is that barnevernet can make an emergency care decision, risking traumatizing the child, and there is no domestic law allowing even requesting an emergency interim measure by court suspending the emergency care.
I think this is an obvious violation of Article 13 of ECHR requiring effective domestic legal remedy with respect to also the right to family, as well as a violation of Article 6 of ECHR requiring a due process — including legal principle of equality of arms.
However international law takes priority over domestic laws. Hence it should be possible to request in special proceedings (out of turn) the suspension of emergency care based on Artilce 13 of ECHR so that barnevernet could continue the case about foster care with the child reunited with family.
In case the request is declined with option of appeal, it could be brought up even to Supreme Court, out of turn. Once the request is declined without any further option for legal remedy out of turn that means all effective domestic legal remedy options are exhausted and the case — request of suspension of emergency care — is admittable to the European Court for Human Rights on its emergency channel. This should happen in a few weeks already.
The major problem is with Norway’s juridical system which lets this amuck happen again and again.
I am more and more convinced that the Norwegian laws are flawed from human rights perspective. Let this case go its way if necessary to Strasbourg. If the article is true, there can be no reason why upholding the care could be necessary in a democratic society. The precedents of European Court of Human Rights tell that this criterium — set in Article 8 of European Convention for Human Rights, Norway has voluntarily joined the convention, accepting jurisdiction of the court mentioned — cannot be fulfilled unless authorities constantly aim at reuniting families as soon as possible.