Nella’s room has been completely untouched since four months ago. She has lived here with her foster mother for almost her entire three-year life.
But when Nella received a deportation order, the city of Malmö moved her to an investigation home together with the biological parents who come from Pakistan. Despite the fact that, according to an LVU decision, they fail in their care.
– It was completely disgusting to leave her there and I found out a day before this, when we were going to drive in there, that it would happen, says Therese Åkerberg, family home mother.
The handling is questioned
The LVU decision states that the parents were unable to meet Nella’s needs for nutritious food, stimulation, closeness and safety. They are also judged to lack the potential for change.
Therese was about to become a guardian, but the process was stopped by the municipality when the deportation order came. Now several organizations are reacting to the way the city of Malmö handled the matter.
– If you have been taken from your parents because they are not able to be parents in a good enough way, then they must have undergone a lasting and profound change for you to go back to your parents and we wonder if the social services have really looked on it properly in this case, says Ida Hellrup, Deputy Secretary General of the Children’s Rights Agency.
“The Convention on the Rights of the Child has not been taken into account”
Nella has a suspected intellectual disability that means she communicates with signs. Children’s habilitation in Region Skåne has made four reports of concern and also reported Ivo to the social service.
– Our assessment is that the child is not given the opportunity for development and security that the child is entitled to and that the child needs and that the Convention on the Rights of the Child has not been taken into account. We are worried that the child is prevented from developing, equally worried that the child is not in a safe environment, says Petra Bovide, operations director of the children’s rehabilitation Region Skåne.
The municipality is also criticized because Nella did not have a representative throughout the process.
– Legal certainty is also a big problem. The legal uncertainty. It is very difficult to know what is actually happening, how the municipality has reasoned, for example, regarding the language, but since Nella does not have a representative, external review will be very difficult, says Karin Hendrikz, lawyer Malmö against discrimination.
– From the outside, it looks like the municipality is doing everything in its power to facilitate the Migration Agency, rather than safeguarding the child’s interests. It is incredibly serious, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been law in Sweden for several years now, and it entails a lot of obligations that seem to be disregarded here, says Ida Hellrup, deputy secretary general of the Children’s Rights Agency.
Not showing up for an interview
The Social Administration in Malmö City does not want to be interviewed by TV4 Nyheterna, but responds in an email, among other things, that according to practice and the preparatory work for LVU, “the basic idea is that care should not last longer than necessary and that the child should be reunited with the parents as soon as possible with consideration of the child’s well-being”.
Furthermore, the municipality writes that “the appointment of a public advisor in relation to an LVU case at the social welfare board takes place after the individual has made an application for public assistance or after the social welfare board has reported a need for public assistance”.
By the third of June at the latest, Nella must be deported to Pakistan.
– As a girl with a disability in Pakistan, it will be extremely bad and that is absolutely not what Nella would have needed, if only they had acted correctly in her case, says Therese Åkerberg, family home mother.