REUNION OF THE FAMILIES-JUST AN ILLUSION?
Every case where a child is placed into custody, is supposed to be temporarily according to the Norwegian Government
( You can find the Norwegian governments explanation of what barnevernet do here )
One should then belive that the Government is keeping a close eye on how
many custody-cases will result in the main target-namely reunite the
family.
So, interested in that statistics, we made an request to the The
Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (BUF-dir).
To our BIG suprise no such statistics exists.
Neither could the county
administration (Fylkesnemda), court-system or Statistics Norway provide
these numbers, because they don`t exist! Even though the Government
state that out-of-home placements are always temporarily, they do not
keep track of these cases.
They still claim that the CPS-systems work will be dedicated to make sure that custody-cases are only exeptions and their main focus is to help children stay in their families. So what does this compelling facts, or lack of them, tell us: The CPS-system is not remotely interested in reuniting the family once the child is in an out of home placement.