« The mission of the social secretaries is doomed to fail »
During the past year, several notable cases have shown basic shortcomings in Sweden’s child protection system. On the one hand, we see cases where children have been taken care of on inadequate grounds. On the other hand, children in deep crime have fallen between the chairs despite countless warning signals. These seemingly opposite situations have the same root – a system where support, protection and crime management are mixed together in an organization that has no prerequisites to handle the complexity.
The essence of the problem is that today’s social childcare is forced to balance between three fundamentally different logics:
1. The crime system – Back -looking, evidence -based and criminal. This is primarily the mission of the legal chain, but the social services are often forced to act within this logic when it comes to young offenders.
2. The child protection system – forward -looking risk management with a focus on preventing potential damage to children. As in the case of the three -year -old girl who was returned home to the social service’s recommendation and later died.
3. The family support system – Relationship -oriented and resource -enhancing. When families seek support, they expect collaboration and early efforts – but meet a system where the same social secretary who offers support can also decide on compulsory measures.
The recent presented the Nuso study shows that only 6 percent of investigated children were considered to devote to their own crime. Nevertheless, the debate on youth crime tends to dictate the conditions for the design of the entire child protection system. We have ended up in a situation where social secretaries in small municipalities are expected to handle everything from simple support efforts to exceptionally difficult cases with gang criminals.
Instead of continuing to patch and fix in the current structure, we need to create three separate systems, where family support remains municipal, easily accessible and clearly focused on voluntary, treatment and early efforts. Child protection is centralized regionally or nationally to ensure legal security, specialist competence and equality in decisions relating to compulsory care. And crime issues are handled more clearly within the legal chain, with the social services in a supporting rather than primarily responsible role in young offenders.
Sweden has all the prerequisites for creating a system where early risk signals are identified more effectively
In today’s system stands the same officer with generalist competence in smaller municipalities facing the impossible task of both building trusting relationships with families in need of support and making intervention decisions on child protection. This is neither legally or effective. A centralized child protection function could gather specialist expertise for the most difficult assessments and enable cross -professional teams where children now fall between the chairs.
Sweden has all the prerequisites to create a system where early risk signals are identified more efficiently. Today, information points are isolated from each other:
● The school’s absence data shows that a child suddenly begun to miss many lessons.
● Preschool records signs of severe care failure.
● The police register children and young people in risky environments.
● Health care documents documented risk conditions.
● The social services have previously knowledge of the family.
An integrated, data -driven system could compile these risk factors and flags for early support efforts before the situation escalates. This is not science fiction – already today the Inspection for Health and Care uses data -driven risk assessment for supervisory efforts. In England, after the pandemic, similar systems for preventive work with the elderly have been introduced to offer support early.
In a reformed system, the courts could play a clearer and more active role. When support efforts are deemed insufficient, a specialized court function could decide on investigative and intervention measures to avoid placement. When necessary, it can make a decision on placement with clear requirements for efforts. And the court function should continuously reconsider decisions based on developments in the family’s situation.
This would strengthen legal security and clarify the division of responsibilities between support and protection.
There is no contradiction between a powerful child protection and a generous family support – but they must be structured in ways that reflect their different logics
The upcoming The Social Services Act and the planned social service data register provide opportunities for change, but without a basic system thinking we only risk new layers of complexity on an already dysfunctional system.
We need a child protection and family support system that is:
● Differentiated – where support, protection and handling of crime are handled with different logic and skills
● proportionate – where the degree of intervention corresponds to both risk and resource needs
● Competence -based – with specialization for different types of cases
● Equally – where the place of residence does not determine the quality of either support or protection
● Data information – which uses technology for better efforts
While politics Focusing on a harder grip, we need to take a step back instead and see the system in its entirety. There is no contradiction between a powerful child protection and a generous family support – but they must be structured in ways that reflect their different logics.
The tragic cases we have seen recently show that the price for the current design of the system is unacceptably high. Sweden now needs a new child protection system where support, protection and legal processes are handled in three separate but collaborative structures.
