Children and young people within social services
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
KD emphasizes that strong families are the foundation for a secure society 1 and boasts about the new Social Services Act, investments in school social teams, and a national social intervention force 1. M expresses pride in the government's work to strengthen preventive work and children's rights through the new Social Services Act 2. M believes that the child's best interests carry the most weight 2, that confidentiality barriers are being dismantled, and that the government is moving from words to action 2 3. M wants to strengthen parental responsibility and advocates for intermediate measures such as electronic ankle bracelets 2 4. S believes that children's futures are threatened by violence 5 and criticizes the government for having abandoned youth crime boards 5 6 7.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Christian Carlsson (KD)
Madam Speaker! What, more than anything else, lays the foundation for a secure society are strong and secure families, with loving parents who have the right values, and families where the parents are prepared to take responsibility and set boundaries, and where there is simultaneously hope for a better future.
The family is society's most important community. It is with the family as a starting point that most of us choose to live our lives. When the family functions as it should, we are seen and affirmed. Then we are met with love, care, and respect, not based on what we perform or how we look, but solely because we exist.
It is also in the well-functioning family that we learn what is right and wrong, to share, and to care about others. It is there that we learn how we should treat our fellow human beings. There we are faced with demands and encouraged to take responsibility. There, good norms and values are passed from one generation to another. All of this gives our children a fundamental security that equips them for life.
The Christian Democrats have therefore always spoken about the importance of the family and pursued a policy aimed at creating the conditions for just strong and secure families.
Of course, there are no perfect families. There are even dysfunctional families that need to be broken up. The fact is, however, that school results, health, and not least the possibility of improving one's situation economically and making a so-called class journey become better when the family functions and the children get to grow up in cohesive and secure families. If one comes from a secure family, the risk of choosing to commit a crime is lower. Strong family ties are one of the primary protective factors against crime, while fractured families with quarrels, exposure to violence, and absent fathers constitute one of the primary risk factors. Strong and secure families, as mentioned, lay the foundation for a secure society.
As a Christian Democrat, I am therefore proud that the government chooses to invest in strengthening family counseling, parenting support programs, and the country's family centers. The parenting support programs are being expanded with the goal that these should be available in all municipalities so that more parents can receive guidance regarding norms and setting boundaries. In that way, more children will have the opportunity to grow up in safe and loving homes.
The government is also reviewing the possibility of strengthening parental responsibility in relation to children in various ways. In particular, work is being done to increase the number of foster homes and in this way strengthen the support for children who, for some reason, can no longer stay at home.
Madam Speaker! Something else that makes me proud of the government cooperation is that the Social Affairs Committee during the spring has been able to receive the government's proposal for a new Social Services Act. It focuses on the social services working more preventatively, not least more crime-preventatively. In addition to the preventive work being strengthened, more interventions shall be possible without extensive investigations or individual needs assessments. It shall simply become easier to get in contact with the social services, and children who have a need for support shall more easily be able to receive it. Now we have a chance to make historically large impacts for the better for children and young people within the social services.
The Government has already done and plans to do much more in the crime prevention area regarding children and young people within the social services. The Government has decided on a new cooperation structure for crime prevention work, Bob, to prevent children and young people from being recruited or rather socialized into gang crime. The Government is investing 300 million annually 2025–2027 in school social teams. A new main rule is also being introduced in the secrecy legislation which will mean that secrecy barriers will be progressively dismantled and that all relevant information shall be shared with law enforcement authorities.
What the Christian Democrats before the election called a national social intervention force has been established to train social workers in proven methods to prevent crime. It is also about providing hands-on support to municipalities where crime and violence have escalated or where social services are otherwise under severe strain.
The social services shall also be granted extended powers to decide on early mandatory interventions for children and their parents in order to prevent crime and recidivism.
In this year's budget, the government also invests particularly in strengthening and coordinating the exit programs. Children and young people who are reconsidering will be given the chance to live an honest life where they do right by themselves, support themselves, and take responsibility for their fellow human beings.
It is important for us Christian Democrats that the person who has committed a crime is sentenced to a fair punishment that is in proportion to the violation the crime entails for the crime victim. We believe that it is a fundamental prerequisite for justice to be administered in our courts. But it is also important that there is a way back for the criminals who have served their sentence and atoned for their crime. What one has done wrong cannot be undone, but it is never too late to improve and make amends.
There needs to be a way forward for those children and young people who have done wrong but who want to do right, and more of the children whom the social services come into contact with and who want to leave crime behind must be given the chance to do so so that they can feel hope for a better future and Sweden become safer.
Gustaf Lantz (S)
Madam Speaker! Children are our future. Therefore, it is so sad that many children's futures in Sweden involve violence and death. But children are, above all, important here and now. Therefore, it is one of our most important tasks to ensure that children do not fall into the gangs' clutches. We know what damage it does to them themselves and everyone around them, how damn difficult it is to get out of there, and that we will never be able to reverse the development with just more police, prison places, and cameras.
Instead of only talking about defector programs, let us start talking about Usväng programs. When a youth is asked about the first assignment for the gang, or when someone gets a pair of shoes or borrows their first banknote, the strong society must be there so that the child can take decisive steps away from organized crime.
We must involve parents, social services, and the school. Society must not be bound by confidentiality, lack of funds, or legal obstacles. We must do things differently to get different results.
Madam Speaker! There is a completed investigation regarding youth crime boards. We could establish a similar arrangement as in Denmark, i.e., boards consisting of judges, police, and someone from the municipal sector who decide on an action plan for a child heading into serious crime. If the social services have proposed sufficient measures, it is that plan that applies, but if it is not considered sufficient, the board can decide otherwise. This is a way to get more Usvängar away from organized crime.
Madam Speaker! What is revolutionary about the proposal is that the youth crime boards do not only examine what the municipalities do, but also what they do not do. Is the help sufficient? Are the boundaries and consequences sufficiently clear? Can society do more? Is someone ensuring that the child gets to football practice? Are there guarantees that the child does not roam around the city and commit crimes?
Sweden needs clearer boundaries for early crime. But we also need to provide better help to children and their parents so that they can make a turn away from crime.
Youth crime boards are what many children and young people need, what many families need, and what Sweden needs.
Madam Speaker! The Government suddenly does not want youth crime boards. From loudly propagating the proposal and shortening the time for the investigation, the Minister for Social Services has now turned against the boards in an equally high tone. What was previously so good is now described as superfluous bureaucracy that leads nowhere. The Tidö Agreement is apparently to be implemented to the letter as long as it concerns throwing people in prison. But a proposal to set clear boundaries from society towards young people, and at the same time give them better help, was fine to scrap.
At the same time, the government is investing large sums of money in lowering taxes for those with the highest incomes, while school and social services are forced to take a backseat.
great difference in priorities
big difference for high-income earners
big difference for children and young people.
When youth care is functioning well, it can make a life-saving difference for children and young people. There is a great power when care staff, social services, school, and psychiatry work together to tackle the problems of children and young people.
The privatization of HVB homes has enabled unscrupulous actors to make million-profit gains at the children's expense. That was how organized crime found its way into youth care.
The police have reported that out of a total of 18 inspected HVB homes, they found links to organized crime in all of them. Many of these are still in operation. Tax money continues to finance shootings and explosions.
This enormous failure also creates a constant flow of young people who are willing to commit crimes. Many of those who deviate from HVB homes also commit serious violent crimes.
Madam Speaker! The cost of placing a youth in a HVB home amounts to several thousand kronor per day. At the same time, a gang criminal costs society, according to calculations, an average of 30 million kronor. A shooting costs more than 75 million kronor.
The absolute worst of both worlds is to pay expensive money to organized crime and at the same time accelerate a negative development. That is where we are now. This must come to an end. Now enough is enough!
We Social Democrats want to bring the HVB homes that care for criminal youths back under public administration. Now, Ivo, who inspects the private HVB homes, has to nag to get the necessary data for his investigations. Often, the authority ends up in a dead end in the investigation work, and a corrupt operation can continue.
The criminals often use threats and intimidation against Ivo's inspectors. For example, the person appointed to inspect an HVB home is often photographed with a mobile camera during the inspection. Furthermore, it happens that the inspectors are required to show their identification in threatening situations.
It must end that it is the criminals who set the pace in Swedish youth care. It is time to turn the tables. If the government thinks it is too Social Democratic to take back ownership, there is something else that can be done instead:
Give legislative support to shut down HVB homes faster
make it possible to keep them closed until the risk of criminal infiltration from organized crime is gone.
We need a new direction for Swedish youth care. We need a new direction for Sweden!
In conclusion, I would like to move for approval of reservation 4.
Johan Hultberg (M)
Madam Speaker! It is with great pride that I stand here today to debate the issue of children and young people within the social services. How can you be proud? perhaps someone will object. There is so much that can and needs to be improved. There are even outright deficiencies and serious conditions, not least within, for example, the state child and youth care.
That is how it is. I am the first to sign on to that. My pride is not primarily about how things look today. My pride comes from the fact that we finally have a government that is working extremely hard to improve the social services. It has begun a very ambitious work to strengthen early and preventive work.
My pride comes from the fact that we Moderates, through the government's work, are now step by step strengthening children's rights and children's position. We are now improving the protection for vulnerable children and young people.
My pride comes from the systematic work that the government is now undertaking to break organized crime and stop the criminal gangs' new recruitment and ruthless exploitation of children and young people.
My pride comes from the fact that we have a government that, in words and actions, shows that a better tomorrow is both possible and within reach.
I am genuinely proud to be part of implementing a battery of measures and reforms that together make Sweden a better country where children and young people have a bright future to look forward to.
Madam Speaker! The motion report that we are now debating concerns issues such as preventive measures, placements in foster homes, HVB, and much more. The committee proposes that all motion proposals should be rejected, primarily with reference to ongoing work.
When it comes to ongoing work, we must honestly say that it is sometimes referred to in a somewhat routine manner when it is proposed that various motions should be dismissed. That is, however, really not the case in this report. The fact is that extensive work is underway in all the areas highlighted in the motions in the report. The fact is that the opposition, with its reservations, is kicking in one open door after another.
Time does not suffice to describe and recount in any detail everything that is now being done. But let me, Madam Speaker, in any case make some points.
Let me begin by mentioning the greatest socio-political reform during my lifetime: the bill on the new Social Services Act. It is a new law for increased rights, obligations, and opportunities. Today's Social Services Act was written in a completely different time.
On July 1, a new, modern Social Services Act will enter into force, which strengthens preventive work and gives the social services better tools to act in time, before small problems have become large.
In the new law, something that might seem obvious is also established, namely that the social services' activities shall be conducted in accordance with science and proven experience and be continuously monitored and developed. In the new law, children's rights are also strengthened by adapting the law to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Speaking of children's rights, they are now being strengthened through a long series of legislative changes. Several changes have already been implemented, and others are in progress. I would particularly like to mention the changes in the Parental Code that were made through the bill Safer Home for Children. Thanks to the Moderat-led government, it is now established in the introductory paragraph of the Parental Code that the child's best interests shall always carry the most weight, more weight than the biological parents' right to their children. A child shall not be forced into contact with a violent parent. Sweden has received a lex Tintin.
Madam Speaker! The new Social Services Act lays the foundation for the development of the social services of the future. But much more is required to reach the high-reaching ambitions that I, the Moderates, and the Tidö parties share.
What is required, among other things, is increased cooperation between school, social services, and the police to early identify children who are in a risk zone of being drawn into crime, developing substance abuse, or other social problems. Therefore, the government is removing secrecy barriers. Therefore, the government is investing in school social teams. Since 2023, there has been a special state grant to get more school social teams started in more municipalities and at more schools. This is done in order to increase student attendance, create a safer and calmer study environment, and improve cooperation between school and social services. The initiative has been requested and successful. Therefore, the initiative was strengthened this year. This work is completely in line with what is requested in many of the motions included in the report.
The same applies to the government's work with expanded home visit programs. Socialstyrelsen has the government's mandate to both support and stimulate the work of child healthcare with expanded home visit programs among younger children.
Socialstyrelsen also has a mandate to provide support in the work of establishing and organizing family centers. Family centers, similar to school social teams, are good tools for creating better cooperation between different actors with the individual child and the individual family at the center.
Madam Speaker! As a Moderate, it is for me self-evident and fundamental to emphasize parental responsibility when we discuss children and young people within the social services. The vast majority of parents truly do their utmost to be good role models and to provide help, support, and good upbringing to their children.
However, there are many parents who fall short in their parenting. In those cases, it is important that one as a parent receives support and help. That is why the government is making a major investment in parenting support. The government invests both to increase the accessibility of support and to develop and quality-assure target-group-adapted parenting support. The social services must stand ready to offer parents support and help.
It is equally important that parents in need of help and support accept the interventions offered. I was truly saddened when I took part of Anna Tengberg's investigation, the so-called "mellantvång" (intermediate coercion) investigation. The investigation estimates that approximately 40 percent of the children and young people whose needs are investigated by social welfare committees and who are judged to be in need of support do not receive it because the child's guardian or the child themselves refuse. So we cannot have that.
Sweden will never, as Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a speech this weekend, be able to break the criminal gangs' new recruitment of children as long as parents are allowed to neglect their responsibility. Therefore, parental responsibility must be strengthened and the social services must be given more and better tools.
My conviction is that, among other things, increased opportunities to provide open interventions without consent are needed and that the social services need to be able to control sobriety and drug-freedom. I therefore truly look forward to the government's continued work with the proposals from the intermediate coercion investigation. The gap between today's Social Services Act and compulsory placements according to LVU needs to be filled.
Madam Speaker! If it were not for the fact that I have already spoken for eight minutes, I would also have liked to speak about the government's initiatives on an independent Children's Ombudsman, about the work to fundamentally reform state child and youth care, about legislative changes to ensure that every municipality takes its crime prevention responsibility, as well as about the government's initiatives to improve the mental and physical health of children and young people. The latter is being carried out, among other things, through the initiative on the leisure card, which is a large and important reform to promote active participation in sports, culture, and outdoor life.
Madam Speaker! I will instead content myself with stating that the pace of reform that we are now seeing in the social policy area is completely unparalleled. Now the social services are being strengthened and reformed. Now children's rights are being strengthened.
With that, Madam Speaker, I move for the approval of the committee's proposal in the report.
Gustaf Lantz (S)
Madam Speaker! The Member of Parliament spoke about closing open doors. Many of us believed that the door to youth crime boards was wide open when we had read the Tidö Agreement. I believed it until I recently had an interpellation debate with the Minister for Social Services, who with fired-up enthusiasm spoke against the proposal. It was bureaucratic, and it led nowhere, she argued.
I cannot interpret it as anything other than the government strongly distancing itself from introducing youth crime boards in Sweden. Therefore, I would like to direct the question to Johan Hultberg: Do you share the Minister for Social Services' view that youth crime is bad for Sweden and that we therefore will not see any youth crime boards during this government?
Johan Hultberg (M)
Madam Speaker! I truly share the Minister's view that youth crime is bad. We need to do more to prevent crime and to ensure that those young people who commit serious crimes are prosecuted and punished. They should, of course, also receive care and treatment, to ensure that they emerge as better people and hopefully can break the criminal path they have started.
When it specifically concerns the proposal on youth crime boards, it is completely absurd that the Minister for Social Services has done what I think one can expect of all serious governments, namely that one reads the referral responses and takes note of the views presented by the referral bodies.
The Minister has concluded that this reform would not be particularly good. We have listened to, among others, party colleagues of Member Lantz who have pointed out precisely that the model risks becoming quite bureaucratic and complicated and that it does not add the added value that would have been desirable and which is the background to why the investigation was commissioned.
Instead, the Minister for Social Services, the Moderates, and the government are now focusing on a number of other reforms. The Bob-structure, which was raised earlier in the debate, is very important. It is precisely about creating a better and more structured cooperation between different agencies and actors.
In addition to that, I raised the need for intermediate coercion. The intermediate coercion investigation proposes, among other things, that a youth could be given an electronic ankle bracelet. It is a way to ensure that a youth who has previously, for example, been cared for at one of the state's special youth homes can go out into a freer care while ensuring that the young person is not drawn into crime. One can follow where the person is, which also becomes an important protection for an individual youth when the previously criminal gang perhaps seeks attention again.
So yes, we are going to do a lot to break youth crime. But the model proposed in this investigation does not seem to be the best way forward.
Gustaf Lantz (S)
Madam Speaker! I find it interesting that the Moderates are suddenly looking for critical Social Democratic voices in the referral process. The interest in the referral responses of Social Democratic municipal councilors is usually not very great in other cases. It simply feels like the government is trying to take an easy way out. They do not want to do what is required to prevent crime and get a powerful reaction early to bring together social services, the police, and the municipal sector and ensure that we get the right interventions.
The wonderful thing about the proposal is that we are not only testing what the social services decide, but also what they do not decide. This is a plan that is established to get a young person to make a Usväng at an early age from crime, which we have previously agreed is good. The government even shortened the investigation period and thought that this was very urgent. But the government is not capable of bringing this important reform to fruition. It is always the preventive work that gets sidelined when this government is going to prioritize, where SD sits and pushes.
I hope, however, that the government will rethink. I hope that one takes impressions from the experiences that exist in Denmark. I have been there myself and met very many who are satisfied with this. It is a young reform, but it is a proof of how one can think newly and creatively also when it comes to those who are very young. It is about coming in early with powerful interventions and to both give help and set boundaries and have a clarity towards youths who are heading into criminality. That is what Sweden needs.
Johan Hultberg (M)
Madam Speaker! The most important thing that has happened in the preventive area in a very long time was that we had a change of power. We got a Moderate-led government that seriously took on the work of working preventively.
The previous Social Democratic government talked a lot about preventive work but delivered very little. Empty barrels rattle the most, as the saying goes.
Now, finally, we have the bill on the new Social Services Act on the Riksdag's table with a reinforced special chapter on crime prevention work. Now, finally, there will be investments in school social teams and in family support. Now, finally, we are addressing the deficiencies within the school system. It is, after all, the case, Member Lantz, that the most fundamental thing for preventing social problems is a successful schooling. We must ensure that we catch children and young people early and ensure that they are equipped for life. We must ensure that they grow up in safe, good families. Therefore, we ensure that we support families to a greater extent, but we also give the social services tools to make interventions even in cases where families or guardians do not take their responsibility, do not accept help. Therefore, the investigation into intermediate coercion is important. With the Bob structure, we also achieve the cooperation that we both are keen on and consider important to get in place.
Finally, Madam Speaker, we are putting the words into practice! We are moving from words to action. We are implementing incredibly large and important reforms in the area of preventive work linked to the new Social Services Act and following up with 8 billion in implementation support and an additional 2 billion for crime prevention work. Furthermore, we are restoring the work principle. It is the foundation for strong preventive work.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.