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Every tenth child in Sweden was affected last year by reports of concern to the country’s social services, new figures show.
The number of cases has increased significantly in recent years and more and more of them concern younger children who are at risk of ending up in crime.
A total of 216,000 children came to the attention of the social services through reports last year, according to the National Board of Health and Welfare’s compilation. This corresponds to 9.8 percent of all children aged 0–17.
A total of around 422,000 reports were made about children who are in harm’s way or are suspected of being in harm’s way in 2021, the authority writes in a press release. That is 27 percent more compared to 2018.
The increase is also visible in the number of notifications per 1,000 children, where the number rose from 154 to 192 during the same period.
According to the National Board of Health and Welfare, the increase can have several explanations, including the fact that the Convention on the Rights of the Child became law in 2020 and that digital e-services made it easier to report.
Every fifth report concerns violence in intimate relationships. At the same time, new trends are also visible in the statistics, including that increasingly younger children are in the risk zone of ending up in crime. Another new trend is crimes and violations that take place via social media.
“It can both be about children who themselves are exposed and about children who expose others to threats, violence and humiliation through the dissemination of images or films,” says Therese Olmsäter, investigator at the National Board of Health and Welfare, in a press release.
Another new area is girls who perpetrate violence against other girls or are on the fringes of gang environments.