Shocking Testimony on the Mechanisms of "Social Services" and Child Removal
Lack of Experience and Standards in Decision-Making
Employees of "Social Services" (Socialsekreterare) working in this system are often quite young, aged between nineteen and twenty years old, and lack any practical or familial experience that would qualify them to handle sensitive issues like these.
A decision to remove a child is made immediately after a phone call or a complaint from anyone against the family, where social services teams go directly to take the child and conduct what is called an "investigation" (Utredning). Unfortunately, this is done without sufficient scrutiny; as soon as a problem is claimed to exist in the family, the child is taken and placed under the care of social services. Estimates suggest that the percentage of victims in these cases ranges between 60% and 80%, in the absence of precise studies documenting these cases.
Behind the Scenes of Administrative Courts and Judges' Decisions
As I was a juror and a judge in the administrative court, I witnessed how these files are managed. In one session, I asked the head of the judiciary why the case was not studied in greater depth before issuing a decision to leave the child with social services, and the response was that "social services have more information about the child."
I faced criticism and accusations simply for questioning the standards of these decisions. I saw shocking things; an immigrant mother who does not speak Swedish well, finds herself facing seven people (social services employees, the child's lawyer, and educators "Pedagog"), all against her, and she only has a general translator. When I confronted the head of the judiciary with the question, "Why don't we study the files more? Why do we give absolute right to social services?", her shocking response was, "This is not our job!"
A Real-Life Story: Nepotism and Corruption in "Norrköping"
I will mention a case I am responsible for and confident in the city of "Norrköping"; a Syrian woman with three daughters, who was suffering from marital problems and difficult financial conditions, sought help from social services. A social services employee exploited her position to remove the children from the mother and give them to her friend under the pretext of "caring for them," and the motive here may be financial.
Worse still, the person the children were placed with (the employee's friend) was a drug addict. Despite our complaints and clarifying that the mother's care in her home is far better than this infested environment, social services insisted on their decision.
Is Child Removal Turning into a Business?
Many people ask: Is this topic a business?
When we see social services removing a child from their parents to place them with another family and paying them amounts up to 40,000 kronor monthly, while newspapers and social media are filled with requests to search for "foster families," we have the right to ask: Why are these amounts not spent to help the original family raise their children instead of dispersing them?
This issue is not just an Islamic one, but a humanitarian one that affects everyone regardless of their religion. If we do not stand together today, this practice will affect everyone. Based on what I have seen of corruption, I announced with a clear conscience my resignation from this corrupt circle.