It started with Peter Lundberg taking office as the new chairman of the social committee in Älvsbyn. Last winter he started asking questions about the parents and the three children. He was told that the parents were impossible to deal with.
– Administrators and officials have warned the parents. In documents it says that it is not possible to talk to them. But once we met the parents, there was no problem talking to them, says Peter Lundberg (KD), chairman of the social committee in Älvsbyn.
An external investigator was given the task of conducting a review of the municipality’s handling of the three boys. The around 200-page review points to several serious shortcomingsmajor knowledge gaps at a basic level, suspected misconduct and several violations of the law.
Taken into care after concern report
The background to the care in 2020 was a report of concern from one of the boys’ schools. He is said to have told that he and others in the family had been beaten by the father.
The municipality acted on the information. But already there and then, the administrators broke the law, according to the external review.
Social services picked up the child from school without a decision on immediate care. They did not even notify the parents that they had taken the boy with them.
Stretched for the truth
The social service has several times stretched the truth, for example after a medical examination. The case officers write in their documents that the children have “abnormally many scars”. They write that it “indicates that the children were exposed to systematic violence in their upbringing”.
The municipality has presented that formulation to the court several times. But that was not at all what the medical examination established. The examination showed that the boys had “several small scars”. The doctor could find no signs that they had been abused.
Reunited with the children
The youngest boy had not yet reached the age of two when they were taken into care. Now the parents Erica and Jörgen have got their children back, after the external review.
Cold facts have met the parents who talk about how the last few years have been.
– It cannot be described in words. Absolutely terrible, says Jörgen.
– We have spent all our waking hours trying to get the children home. We have had to push ourselves bloody, says Erica.
The parents have only been allowed to see their children on one occasion in recent years.
– When the meeting was over and we start to put on our shoes, the children run out into the parking lot and want to come home with us. And how do we explain it to the children? That we can’t take them home, says Jörgen.
Five administrators suspended
The social manager in the municipality has now chosen to suspend five caseworkers.
– The shortcomings are serious. It also creates a deteriorating trust in the exercise of authority, says social manager Robert Cortinovis.
– It is very difficult to answer why this was not discovered earlier. I hope to get an answer to that, after we have done our investigations, says the social manager.
Good signals
The parents have been convicted of crimes in 2015. The mother was convicted of molestation and the father of assault. The victim was an older child of the father.
According to people Kalla fakta spoke to, it should not have been relevant in the care of the younger boys in 2020.
The investigations carried out by Älvsbyn’s social service are so poorly carried out that it is impossible to establish whether the boys were exposed to violence or not, according to the external investigation. Now that the family has been reunited, the first signs are good according to reports to Kalla fakta.
The children are happy and have shown no signs of anxiety.
– You can see that they are taken. But I could have imagined that it would go so well once we got them back, says Jörgen.