One Message, and you are Childless!

This article was originally written in Norwegian - the original can be found here: https://ue.land/en-melding-og-du-er-barnlos/). I don't believe that the situation is very different in other Western countries.

The power a child welfare worker holds is something you likely don't understand until you encounter it. With a bachelor's degree and a position as a caseworker in child welfare, you can take custody away from a family and give it to another.

It may sound absurd, but child custody removals have happened based on concerns such as "the children eat with their hands." "The parents cut the bread slices too thick" is another example.

But the worst I've seen is "the parent grew up under the care of child welfare," making them unqualified to be parents.

Can you imagine a failure declaration of such magnitude?

I've worked in the field since 1983. I have 22 years of experience in institutions, one year at a child welfare office – where I became sick from working – and several years of education.

I've seen it in practice. With a well-placed concern – often anonymously – someone can take away your custody. Since I am a child welfare worker, it would be more effective for me not to be anonymous.

Let's dive deeper into this matter. What makes the Norwegian population give so much power to a group of professionals?

Why don't we rebel?

ARE WE SHEEP?

Sheep are sweet animals. But they are not exactly known for independent thinking. If one of them runs, they all run. And often in the same direction – toward or away from the cliff.

We have created an image that biological parents cannot provide care as well as “professional” parents: foster homes, emergency homes, and institutions.

Unfortunately, things do not go well with institution kids. Institutions act as training grounds for drug use, and foster homes struggle to deal with the trauma that the custody removal represents. American research indicates that separation from the biological family is so difficult to overcome that it is better to stay in the family – even if the care is not ideal according to our definition.

In closed and open groups on social media, children and adults cry out in despair. The voices are getting louder and louder. The means; public shaming of child welfare employees, institutions being set on fire, and suicides; increasingly extreme.

I have seen lives saved in institutions. And destroyed.

But... what can we do? How can we secure the children and the parents; empower the parents to become the best caregivers they can be?

Identifying past mistakes is a start. My suggestion here is a disaster commission. An interdisciplinary group with the authority and mandate to implement change.

The crucial question, in this case, is "how to identify mistakes?".

If we start with what the parents say, we get a biased sample.

The same if we ask the children.

And if we ask the employees, it is difficult to say that we get unbiased information.

Today's technology can be a shortcut.

With an AI expert system – local, not connected to external networks – and access to all digitized data on child welfare cases, we would be able to assess cases against outcomes. This naturally also requires access to NAV (the Norwegian welfare office), the population register, and other registers relevant to citizens.

Using machine learning, we could follow the life trajectory of individuals and see how various factors influence it. Are there any "strange attractors" that create deviations? Are there specific caseworkers who have better or worse outcomes regarding socioeconomic variables than others? Does a social worker from OsloMET (a college) have a better success rate than a child welfare worker from Østfold in empowering parents and children to create a good life?

We could also identify whether aspects of the leadership style of middle and top managers, both at the child welfare office and in associated services such as NAV, and political leadership, influence the results.

Identifying human and systemic factors that are problem carriers is a start. But concrete action is also necessary.

As mentioned above, there are significant challenges with institutions and foster homes. We also know from adoptive children that the urge to know the biological family is a strong drive.

So let's think differently about institutions.

Say a parent has a drug problem. Instead of sending the children to an institution while the parents are treated at another institution, create a neighboring house.

In one apartment, the children receive care. In the other, the parents receive drug treatment. When the parents are ready, and the children wish it, there can be interaction. This also opens up opportunities for family therapy, preferably following the Open Dialogue model (Seikkula).

Child welfare has gone through many trends. Currently, the prevailing one seems to be "trauma awareness."

What is the danger of such a model?

Simply that we forget the opposite perspective. What are the strengths of children and adults, what creates resilience, how do we empower parents to provide good care – and what is actually "good care" and "the best interest of the child"?

Here we can get help from a new framework developed by a group from the UK, led by psychologists Mary Boyle and Lucy Johnstone.

It is called the "Power-Threat-Meaning Framework" with the subtitle "An alternative to psychiatric diagnosis."

PTMF asks the following questions:

• "What has happened to you?" (How does power affect your life?)
• "How did it affect you?" (What threats did it pose?)
• "How did you understand it?" (What meaning do you attribute to what happened to you?)
• "What did you have to do to survive it?" (What threat responses do you use?)
• "What are your strengths?" (What access to power resources do you have?)
• ... and to unify all the above: "What is your story?"

(Boyle, M. Johnstone, L. Norwegian translation 2024 by Trond F. Aarre. p. 44)

Those who get a sense of Foucault when reading the above are not far off. He challenged the prevailing understanding – the discourse – that power was owned by individuals or groups, or localized to certain places, and challenged us to look at how hidden forms of power created social norms and standards. We have many such phenomena in our society – such as the gender identity debate/Pride, conflicts between different religions and cultures, etc.

PTMF challenges us to engage in a narrative interpretation. To seek explanations, not labels, and enter a holistic model, where parents' and children's understanding of the situation is central to finding effective measures.

Let's transform child welfare into the helping institution our citizens need.