Preschool staff in Gothenburg are forced to endure threats from criminals

Preschool staff in Gothenburg are forced to endure threats from

It still happens that Kajsa Andersson thinks of the boy. The years have passed, this was at another preschool, in another part of the city. This was the time when she did not write a report of concern to the social services – when she did not dare.

– Both the mother and the father were part of a motorcycle gang and we suspected that the child was abused. But I did not get the principal or the others in the work team with me. They said that “you can put your name on this yourself”. And then I did not dare to report. I’m still thinking about that child, I hope someone else dared, she says.

DN could last week tell how employees and managers at municipal preschools in Gothenburg state that they have refrained from acting, or changed decisions or proposals, for fear of reprisals. In a recent survey, 165 employees state that in the past year they have been exposed to threats or violence in their professional practice.

Kajsa Andersson works as a union shop steward and preschool teacher in Tynnered, one of the districts in Gothenburg that is on the police’s list of vulnerable areas. Criminal networks have long been well established in the district.

– My first half year here was something of a shock. I did not feel that I had the skills I needed to meet a guardian who behaves threateningly, she says.

Kajsa Andersson tells how she was trapped in a cloakroom with a very aggressive father – for more than an hour. The man raised his hand to Kajsa, who was pregnant at the time, and threatened to hit her.

The origin of the event was an everyday occurrence.

– We had called the guardian to say that he had to pick up his child, who was clearly ill. I was called “whore” and other things, says Kajsa Andersson.

The situation as Kajsa Andersson reproduces are far from unique. She says that at the preschool where she works, all employees have their own experiences of being exposed to threats or situations that risk turning into violence.

For a period in 2017, the preschool principal Helen Löfgren was forced to have protection from a security company when she got to and from her workplace.

– I think it was about missing clothes. A dad went completely crazy because I did not intend to replace anything. Sometimes people bring the wrong clothes, but he thought we had stolen them, she says.

An official statement which was submitted to the preschool board in Gothenburg at the end of May shows that the city of Gothenburg has on several occasions during the past year placed guards at preschools to ensure the safety of staff.

“Alarms have been installed at a couple of preschools due to death threats and repeated shootings near the preschool,” the statement said.

Björn Öberg, security strategist at the preschool administration in Gothenburg, is one of those who wrote the document. He says that sometimes it is the children who need protection and states that since he took office in 2018, the city has deployed security guards at preschools on 15-20 occasions. On a few occasions, wards have been provided with assault alarms.

– It can be about custody disputes, about a guardian who has lost custody of his child or about other external factors. When the children have a threat from home, for example the risk of kidnapping, it is taken to the preschool, he says.

In the role of union representative Kajsa Andersson has good insight into what it looks like at other preschools in western Gothenburg and she emphasizes that the problem of threats and violence is not limited to preschools in vulnerable areas. That picture is shared by Hans Wettby, acting director of the preschool administration in Gothenburg, who DN interviewed last week.

But the problems of threats and violence assume a different character in districts where some guardians are well known in the local community for connections to gangs or families with large violent capital. It happens that staff at preschools suspect that both drugs and weapons are stored in the children’s home environment.

For Kajsa Andersson it was far from obvious to choose a position in Tynnered. She grew up in the district, on Opaltorget, one of the areas where the problems with gang-related crime are most clearly seen. She left Tynnered when she was 16 and promised herself never to return.

– I carry my deepest wounds from here, she says about Tynnered.

– But also my fondest memories. I would never return here, but still I found a way to find meaning in returning.

She says that many in the preschool draw strength from their own experiences in order to be able to continue the work of giving the children as good conditions as possible so as not to end up in exclusion.

The problems with threats and aggressive guardians that Kajsa Andersson has described now occur less and less at the preschool where she works. It has several causes that can be summarized as a conscious and long-term preventive work.

Firstly, Kajsa Andersson points out, she and her colleagues have a strong principal who always signs the reports of unrest that the preschool is sometimes forced to submit to the social services. In this way, an individual employee is not designated.

Working at preschool one also with a project called Building Bridges. It aims to strengthen the staff in the work of helping children out of exclusion and into Swedish society.

– We have focused very much on the relationship with guardians, that is the key if you are to succeed. We are sometimes far apart, but we have the care of the child together and there we can meet, says Kajsa Andersson.

In the city of Gothenburg For example, the parties in the ruling Alliance have recently announced that they have reached an agreement with the Democrats to push for half a billion kronor for security-creating measures in preschool, school and social services.

That is good, says Johanna Jaara Åstrand, chairman of the Swedish Teachers’ Union, the trade union that organizes teachers and preschool teachers in Sweden. At the same time, she is looking for more preschool teachers.

– If they think they can solve these problems with more guards and assault alarms, they are fooling themselves. It can be a solution for a short time. But preventive solutions are needed, says Johanna Jaara Åstrand.

The preventive work that retors Helen Löfgren and Kajsa Andersson and colleagues carry out in Tynnered has had an effect.

– I have not received a single threat against me since 2019, says Helen Löfgren.

Facts. The project Build bridges

Building bridges is run by the non-profit association Acting 4 Change and offers a model for how staff with, for example, dialogue evenings can work long-term with questions about values.

The aim is to strengthen the rights of children and young people, to promote integration and to prevent honor-related violence and oppression. At the same time, staff must be more confident in meeting guardians in difficult conversations.

Source: Building bridges / City of Gothenburg

Show more

Read DN’s news from Gothenburg.

dny-general-01