Meeting a young woman - even a teenage girl - where the breasts are developing is a temptation for every man. Sometime the urge to touch them and feel how firm they are can become too much.

And by nature this urge is limited for most fathers’ biological offspring, which is a good thing.

However the role of a father in a foster family can be too much for some men and in Sweden such a man had a lot of children in foster care before his wife became tired of him running around a touch the breasts of the teenage girls the parents had in foster care. She pressed charges against him.

We might ask: Why wasn't it discovered before? The answer is simple. Children in need are in many cultures thought of as troubled youth. You tend not to believe them like the Danish social worker Gitte Blume didn't trust 3 girls when they explained about alleged sexual abuse. It took years before the foster parent was brought to justice.


Sources:
Fosterpappa åtalas för övergrepp (AftonBladet)

Skælskør: Tilsynet overså rædselshus (Ekstra-Bladet)

For many years Luzerne County in Pennsylvania was known for its strict policy against juvenile crime. It was a model for those who plea for justice and a fight for less crime among adolescents.

But it did turn out that the tough sentences had nothing to do with a wish to fight crime. It was all done for greed. The owners of boot camps, wilderness programs and other residential options had paid the judges to impose tougher sentences.

Children charged with only minor crimes were put in prison taken out of courts in handcuffs and shackles as they had murdered several persons. It is needless to say how what was supposed to be a lecture in right and wrong instead turned out to be a life-changing turning point in the lives of every of the children who were put through this experience.

Many suffered for years  feeling being permanent branded as criminals and some did later take their own  lives.

The Pennsylvania Kids-for-Cash scandal is now well-known in our culture. An episode of Law- and Order was broadcasted world over letting everyone know how dangerous a system where minors are placed in various residential options without proper political supervision can be. Still in many countries audit of systems where case workers and judges have sole control with the faith of children and especially who they will grant the care of a specific child is basically missing.

The people we citizens vote into office must see to that they supervise the structure. They need to watch how money exchange hands very carefully. They must demand results and move out of their chair and visit children placed outside their home.

The hidden money transactions are not only a problem for Pennsylvania. As far away as Denmark and Sweden you can see stories in the media about children placed in public care which are abused and mistreated in group homes and in the foster care system - Cases where reports of alleged abuse have entered the system for over 20 years only to disappear.

The politicians should have asked to obvious question: Who caused these report to disappear? Who forgets to report when two minors at a group home have sexual encounters? In a country like Denmark it is reported that such encounters take place twice at month. Children aged down to 7 are abused by older children and the employees of the group homes are not educated to treat the victims who in extreme cases can cause them to grow up and become abusers themselves.

But the politicians have failed their jobs. They have not asked to have put every single contract between their administration and group homes and foster families on the table so they can discover suspicious patterns. We are talking huge amounts which are changing hands.

It is time for the citizens to step up and write the persons they have elected for office to ask them to dig into this area not leaving it up to a closed circuit of deals made in the dark.

Today it is judgment day in the Pennsylvania Kids-for-Cash scandal, but tomorrow it should be judgment day for all sick systems with the potential of corruption and possible damage of children’s lives.

Source:
Parents: Give him the max (The Times Leader, August 11, 2011)

You may answer: Of course!

At it should be expected that such a serious accusation always should result in an investigation.

But this is rarely the case!

Out of 89 cases where the foster child reported alleged abuse only 1 case ended in the termination of the status as foster parents. In many cases the report is filed and the archived.

That is not acceptable when taken into consideration that the state placed these children at the very foster families because the birth parents allegedly did a poor job as parents.

Sweden should demand higher standards and ask that all cases are investigated by the police. Only then would Sweden be able to claim that it as a country acts in the best interest of the children.

Source:
89 misstänkta övergrepp – bara en familj förbjöds att ta nya fosterbarn (AftonBladet)

Abroad several countries seem to view the foster care system in Sweden as one of the best.

However we are talking of a flawed system. The system functions something like placeing at-risk children at families living very far from the larger towns and then leave them there where they cannot interact with other at-risk teenagers.

It is a kind of positive peer culture system where there is very few humans to talk with at all. The risk is that the isolation in the forest areas might cure the children of choosing a criminal future, but at a prize where they don't learn to interact with larger social masses forcing them to remain living outside the cities.

As the article mentions below there are few demands put upon parents who want to be foster parents, which place the children at risk of abuse in the hands of the foster parents. Oversight and supervision from the authorities are almost entirely left out due to the huge distances.

We will publish a number of articles about the dysfuntional foster care system in Sweden so other countries may choose a different path which actually saves children.

Source:
Vad krävs för att få bli fosterfamilj? (AftonBladet)

A study by the John Hopkins University children in foster care risk being subjected to sexual abuse in a much higher degree than children, who live with their family.

This study was confirmed by a survey conducted in conjunction with a Baltimore lawsuit. Trudy Festinger, head of the Department of Research at the New York University School of Social Work confirmed the negative trend.
But also in Denmark headlines speak of this risk. Still Denmark continues to place more children in foster care than other Nordic countries like Norway and Sweden.

Some professionals tried to defend the higher level of children in foster care by claiming that the level of supervision of the foster parents and group homes are far better than in any other country in the world. However this has not stopped scandals like the Mern foster care scandal from appearing.

The only solution to keep the children safe is to improve the preventive work in the families. In Denmark where social workers basically built their careers on getting cases where they can help their colleges who supervise placements to foster parents or group homes, shifting focus to preventive work in the families properly will demand a new generation of social workers as the culture inside the department of social services will be subjected to a 100 percent conversion in order to achieve such a new strategy.

Sources:
Sexual Abuse: An Epidemic in Foster Care Settings? (HG Legal directory, by Orlow, Orlow % Orlow)
A Critical Look At The Foster Care System: How Widespread a Problem? (Lifting the Veil, by Rick Thomas)
Mern Foster Care Scandal (Fornits Wiki Database)
Børn krænker hinanden sexuelt (Nordjyske Tidende, by Kirstine Christensen, article in Danish language)

Once again has the government in Costa Rica closed a boarding school for teenagers from the United States down.

Over the years has there been such closings in the Costa Rica, the Czech republic and Mexico.

It seems that the method of forcing teenagers to go to school outside their hometown may be conflicting with basic humans rights, which is something parents in every country should consider.

As long as the court down in Costa Rica hasn't ruled in this case, it is not known what led the government to start the investigation. We hope to receive more information about this case later.

Sources:
PANI cierra academia juvenil por supuestos maltratos a alumnos (In spanish)

In 2010 the Danish economy was under severe pressure. The government tried to impose a number of cuts in all sectors - also the education sector.

Several places in Denmark the children do no longer learn how to swim in water. They are told to do swiming exercises on land.

Also a number of smaller schools have been closed and a higher number of students are put in every class.

Everybody did suffer. All but the boarding schools known in Danish as "Efterskoler". They have a large lobbyist organization called the "Efterskoleforeningen".

First and foremost they hunt down every negative article online or in newspapers trying to do damage control. Even on foreign versions of Wikipedia they are active. People can judge for themselves by looking at the history of continuation schools and the marketing article the association created on Wikipedia trying to distance themselves from other kind of boarding schools regardless of the fact that they offer what most boarding schools market: Small classes and special subjects.

In the end they managed to be spared in the cuts putting a burden on the public school system in Denmark, which lose a huge amount everytime a stuent choose these "Efterskoler" instead of the normal public schools.

In a country many Americans find under influence of socialism it is a rare exception.

In the school year 2010 - 2011 news about a number dangerous situations at sea reached the newspapers. Also a number of cases involving lack of supervision and violence among the students were published.

Still the schools try to supress the truth and selling a product to the families which can be dangerous to the individual student.

We will monitor the present vandalism of Wikipedia and follow their other movements.

Right now the authorities are looking on every case where they have removed a child from their parents only to place them in foster care or at group homes.

Denmark are known for using over-priced solutions compared with the rest of the Nordic countries. In fact numbers from 2010 did show that most group homes cost about 25 percent more compared with group homes in Sweden and Norway.

But are they better?

No. The number of placements a child removed from the parents at an early age live to reside in is high. Some have been placed in more than 10 places before the reach the age of adulthood.

Also a steady number of scandals hit the entire business every. Cases of abuse, cases of the use of methods which every professional would question.

Denmark is known to be a country where quality is something which are perferred rather than quantity, but when it comes to the decision whether to remove a child from the parents, Denmark is using an old method which does not serve the child best.

Very often the largest department in city order a massive report called the Clause 50 report. Everybody involved in the life of a child (school, kindergarten, therapists, doctor, hospital etc.) are asked what kind of problems they believe a family have. Then it takes months while the case worker tries to incorporate negative wordings in the statement so the department of social service can justify the spendings.

Once the report is finished the case worker present the report to part-time politicians who often have no background or education which enables them to become experts in such cases.

Needless to say that the department of social services often is the both the lawyer and judge in such cases. You just have to ask yourself if you as a parttime politician would go against such a professional case worker, when it is question to serve the child involved in the case in the best possible way.

Of course not, so the case worker is mandated to call some of his or her friends who runs a group home or are qualified to be foster care parents. In Denmark all it take is to copy the mission statement of another group home before you are in business as a group home.

Denmark has been hit by the economy. Never has there been a reason for the politicians to order consultants to review the spendings of the department of social services as now. It would take some courage by the politicians, but it is needed to battle conditions which resembles corruption.

In order countries like the United States it is well known that educational consultants receive massive fees when they refer children to residential treatment options.

Denmark keeps the selection process a secret. It leaves the impression that there are something to hide. The only way to discover whether it is the case is to make a review of the spendings.

It cannot be done too soon. We are talking the lives of the children.

References:
Large fluctuations in youth placements (Videnskab.dk - google translated)