Response to interpellation 2023/24:169 on legal certainty and children's perspectives in LVU cases
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
M wants to carry out a paradigm shift in LVU by strengthening the child's rights and the principle of the best interests of the child 1 2. M wants to introduce requirements for science and proven experience in the Social Services Act, tighten the social committee's follow-up responsibility 1 3 and as well as require that parents are drug-free before children are returned 3. M wants to move decisions to the profession to ensure legally secure decisions 4 and argues that the child should be an independent rights holder 2. S argues that legal certainty is fragile and that inexperienced politicians may risk intervening incorrectly 5 6. S argues that professionalization or juridification of authority exercise is not without problems 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.
Statsrådet Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M)
Madam Speaker! Linus Sköld has asked me if I intend to act so that similar incidents to those that have occurred in Älvsbyn Municipality cannot happen again. Linus Sköld has also asked me what I can do to strengthen legal certainty and ensure the children's perspective in the exercise of authority in the social services.
Children's rights and safety are a priority area for me and the government, but as a minister, I cannot comment on individual cases. My and the government's ambition is to achieve a paradigm shift so that children's rights receive better impact in the mandatory legislation concerning children and young people. Therefore, the government is carrying out a reform of the Act (1990:52) with special provisions on the care of young people, abbreviated LVU, in order to strengthen the principle of the child's best interests.
One of the social services' most important tasks is to ensure that children who are in a vulnerable situation receive the support and protection they need. Every decision must be based on an assessment of what is best for the child. The child must be informed and given the opportunity to express their opinion.
For me and the government, it is important that the social services take science and proven experience into account. During 2024, the government will present a proposal for a new Social Services Act to replace the current Social Services Act (2001:453). One goal of the new Social Services Act is to strengthen the development towards a knowledge-based social service, among other things by introducing a requirement for science and proven experience in the new law. A knowledge-based social service presupposes access to relevant analyses, statistics, and research. An important tool for this is social services data registers. The Government Offices have therefore commissioned an investigator to assist the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs in investigating better conditions for developing a knowledge-based social service (S 2023:B).
Within the framework of a social service that strives to become increasingly knowledge-based, it is natural that the question of the division of roles between professionals and elected officials is raised. The question is complex in several ways. It concerns not only the social service's decision-making according to the Social Services Act but also according to LVU, LVM, and the Parental Code. It brings into focus issues of legal certainty, transparency, cost control, and responsibility. Fundamentally, it is about how the social service shall ensure qualitative and legally secure decisions for children and adults.
Ultimately, it is also about ensuring the quality of society's care of children and young people. I have also recently received the report For children and young people in society's care (SOU 2023:66). The investigation on children and young people in society's care (S 2021:06) has been tasked with reviewing and proposing measures for how the quality of care can be increased when children and young people are placed in foster homes, emergency homes, supported housing, and homes for care or housing, including special youth homes, with support of the Social Services Act and LVU. The report is currently being prepared within the Government Offices, at the Ministry of Social Affairs. When that work is complete, I and the government intend to return to the issue.
Linus Sköld (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the opportunity to debate what I consider to be a very important issue. Älvsbyn is, in fact, the municipality where I live.
Älvsbyn was governed until January 1, 2023, by the Social Democrats and has been so since the introduction of democracy. On January 1, 2023, a constellation of parties took power with the Moderaterna as the chairman of the municipal executive board. The Moderaterna were newly formed at that time, so they have no experience of working with politics at all. To that can be added that Älvsbyn is a fairly small municipality with 8,000 inhabitants. Every elected official except for the chairman of the municipal executive board is a part-time politician.
The newly elected chairman of the committee responsible for the exercise of authority in the social services is also a lay politician. One of the first things that happens when he takes office is that he meets parents who have requested to meet him, biological parents of children who are placed following a decision according to LVU. He then initiates a document review. The reviewer goes through the documents in the case and recommends that the care shall cease. The committee revokes the placement in accordance with that proposal.
It emerges quite quickly that both parents, who had previously been convicted of crimes of violence against and harassment of children, are again being investigated for serious crimes such as exploitation of children for sexual posing and aggravated child pornography crimes. What happens when it ends up in the newspaper is that the police take action. They go and arrest the parents, deprive them of their liberty, so that the children can be returned to the family home - urgently, then. Afterwards, one of the children in the family testifies that during the time they were at their biological parents' home after the decision that the care was to cease, they were subjected to violence.
This is as wrong as it can possibly be in the exercise of authority. There are clearly several rule violations committed here. In January 2020, the Convention on the Rights of the Child became Swedish law; nevertheless, this LVU scandal in Älvsbyn occurred completely without the children or their representatives being given the opportunity to comment.
I think the minister is giving a lot of words as an answer, but I don't really hear what I am supposed to get out of it. I would like to have a more concentrated answer.
The Minister says, for example, that children's rights and safety are a priority area. But from my perspective, it is important that the Minister, just like all of us others, does what she can so that it does not go so wrong in the exercise of authority one more time.
That is why I want to give the minister a new chance to answer the question of what she can do to ensure that children are not returned to home conditions where they are harmed in this way. How can she ensure legal certainty and a child perspective in the exercise of authority? What can the minister do?
Statsrådet Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M)
Madam Speaker! I want to point out sharply that I assume there is a prior understanding in the interpellation debates that there is no possibility for me, as a minister, to anticipate, intervene in, or in any way comment on individual events. That is what I want to proceed from in the continued debate.
When it comes to the safety of children and young people, it is an important issue for me. It has been since long before I became a minister. Among the Social Democrats who have sat with me in the Social Affairs Committee, I believe there are many who can testify that the work we have carried out, not least when it concerns lex Lilla hjärtat which we intend to return with in the form of a referral to the Council of State in the near future, includes among other things introducing that which the Social Democratic government did not want to do despite that there were six parties in this Riksdag that stood behind it.
We must now move forward. Unfortunately, we have tragic examples that it has not been enough for the Convention on the Rights of the Child to become Swedish law. We also need sharp legislation to reinforce this. There, the important principle is that children's rights shall take precedence over biological parents' and adults' rights.
The upcoming tightening of the LVU legislation means that children become independent rights holders and that children's rights become a separate legal requirement in Swedish legislation. It is a legislative process that I have carried with me from the opposition in this chamber into the Government Offices and which the government intends to realize and implement.
This legislation will also mean that we will tighten the social committee's follow-up responsibility for children and young people after they have been placed.
We are also moving forward from the current Lex Lilla hjärtat, which the previous government created for children and young people who are taken into care due to drug issues of the parents. There shall now not only be an opportunity to conduct investigations and examine whether the parents are drug-free; there shall be an absolute requirement. No child shall run the risk of being returned to a home environment where the parents are drug abusers.
There are some concrete examples of how we are now working to strengthen the rights of children and young people, a work that the previous government did not want to complete despite an overwhelming majority for it in this chamber.
Furthermore, we are making a paradigm shift when it comes to working early and preventatively. It is about starting as early as at BVC and MVC, strengthening family centers across the country, ensuring that there is support in school with school social teams, reinforcing child and youth care, and reviewing the entire process so that foster homes get other opportunities to perform a good job.
I will return to the Social Services Act, as it is one of the most requested legislative changes when it comes to working with children and young people. Being able to make early interventions, preventive interventions, which allow one to meet these children and young people will give the social services completely different conditions than those had with the legislation that has applied for more than 40 years and which means that one reacts when serious matters have already gone far too far.
Linus Sköld (S)
Madam Speaker! I want to begin by saying that I have not expressed a single expectation that the Minister should comment on an individual case. I illustrated what I assess to be a serious problem with a story from my home municipality because I am well acquainted with that story.
I am interested in what the Minister wants to do to strengthen legal certainty and the child perspective in the exercise of authority within the social services, and I think this case illustrates that it is fragile. Legal certainty here is fragile. That is why I began by describing how the shift in power occurred and how quickly it went from politicians who understood their role in the exercise of authority and were used to making decisions and driving cases in accordance with that, to an inexperienced politician who may end up wanting to intervene.
It is completely understandable that if one hears stories about how things went and what was wrong, one wants to act to intervene. Of course, that is the case, but then there is a risk that it goes very wrong. With that as a background, I am interested in what we can do legislatively so that it does not go this wrong again - completely without expectations for comments on this specific case.
The median municipality in Sweden has 12,000 inhabitants, which is approximately 50 percent larger than Älvsbyn's municipality.
There is no reason to believe that in a municipality that has long been ruled by a strong Moderate Party or a strong Alliance and which for the first time experiences a change of power where inexperienced Social Democrats take over, it would go any other way. This is therefore not a party-political observation, but I think it will be fragile because it is people who come in as elected officials and receive a terribly great responsibility for how things go for individual people in very vulnerable situations. That is the problem.
The fact that they are small municipalities also means that quite few votes can cause the majority in the municipal council to shift and that one gets completely different politicians who are ultimately responsible. I would therefore like to know how one can strengthen the rule of law in the exercise of public authority.
Statsrådet Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M)
Madam Speaker! With a fairly long local political experience behind me in a small municipality with a median of 12,000 inhabitants, even though the number of inhabitants has increased since I was active in this municipality, I am well acquainted with the conditions. And there was a change after a very long period of Social Democratic rule. This part I am, therefore, very familiar with. And I believe that we really must continue to work with the democratic processes and discuss the distribution of roles in a clear and distinct way.
If you live in a small municipality, it is at the freezer counter at Ica that you meet the local residents in a very tangible way, in contrast to Stockholm where you are significantly more anonymous to the voters who are around you.
Therefore, I believe that this is an issue that we must discuss further in many different ways. It is not just about child and youth care but also about fixing holes in the street and so on. With that said, this is one of the absolutely most important issues to focus on, and there I share the interpellant's view. We must do everything we can to ensure legal certainty for precisely these decisions. It is also important that the voices of children and young people are heard and that the role of the profession is strengthened in various ways.
That is why it is important to now continue to discuss the content of the inquiry into the Social Services Act. The responsible minister was Lena Hallengren. And one of the directives for this Social Services Act was that it should not be cost-driving and that it should not be ambition-raising in that way. There I must be honest and say that it has been a challenge for me to meet this.
It has also been claimed that this legislation has been ready to be put into use, which is far from true. We therefore have a number of challenges to be able to do this.
It was also clear and distinct during the investigation's progress that we Moderates pushed the issue of professionalizing the social services to a much greater extent, that is, moving the decisions to a much greater extent to the profession from the elected officials. It is about an incredibly high degree of expertise.
When we now focus on a new Social Services Act, where knowledge and evidence will be so strongly in focus, this issue will become even more relevant. Therefore, I welcome that we discuss what the role of the profession should look like.
I would naturally have wished that we had had a situation with another proposal in the investigation of the new Social Services Act, where the moderate proposal had been followed through from the previous government. Then, a different confidence would have been shown in the profession, i.e., that one trusts that the profession stands strong in its knowledge with the right support. Then we would not have had the discussion that we have today. But that is not where we stand.
That is why this government is working, in various ways in cooperation and dialogue with SKR, with Akademikerförbundet SSR, with Vision, and with Föreningen Sveriges socialchefer, to ensure that we obtain a new and strong Social Services Act which means that we can obtain these legally secure decisions.
Linus Sköld (S)
Madam Speaker! I began this debate by speaking about the case in Älvsbyn where the exercise of authority towards three children went terribly wrong. I also intend to conclude the debate with this. However good it is that we have lex Lilla hjärtat in place and that the Convention on the Rights of the Child has become Swedish law, it was possible to ignore them in this process. It is clear that accountability will be able to be demanded because existing legislation was violated when these decisions were made. And the same thing will be able to happen even in the event of a tightening.
But one question here is how to prevent this from happening. Professionalization, or for that matter juridification, of the exercise of authority is not without problems. I cannot easily say that this is the only and uniquely redeeming idea, but I think one also needs to problematize this.
If it is this that the Minister pins their hopes on as a major change, it remains to be seen how this will turn out.
I only note that despite ambitious legislation, for example regarding children being given the opportunity to express themselves, one can violate this legislation, and terrible things can happen.
Statsrådet Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M)
Madam Speaker! I thank the interpellor for important questions. What it fundamentally concerns is what we collectively strive for, as I perceive it, namely that we should be able to secure the safety and security for children and that things should not go wrong - that children should not come to harm in society's care. That is the starting point. And there I perceive that we have a common endeavor to ensure that we can also increase this safety. That is also the government's ambition.
I want to emphasize that the "Little Heart" Act, according to the version that the current government intends to present, is not yet in place. That the child as an independent rights-holder shall be a separate legal requirement, I see as a portal paragraph and as a major paradigm shift in how we highlight children's rights before adults' and before parents' rights. It is an important difference, and it also presupposes that there will be a change in the social services' work with these children.
I agree with the interpellor that this issue is very complex and that it concerns not just one law but several laws. These are laws that are of a very intrusive nature for adults and children. It raises the question of legal certainty, of transparency, of cost control, but also of responsibility.
From my side, as the person responsible for children's rights, I will, within a number of different investigations that are now on our table and are being prepared within the Government Offices, have the best interests of the child in mind and take these issues further to ensure what is our common understanding.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.