Letter From the UK (About 'Nazi' Social Workers)

A rising tide of anger across Europe at 'Nazi’ social workers

Last weekend, hundreds of Norwegians and foreign parents marched on the parliament in Oslo to protest children being taken into 'care' by the state 

Daily Telegraph

Christopher Booker

Even I was rather surprised to see a newspaper headline reporting that the president of the Czech Republic had accused the social workers of another European country of acting “like Nazis”. As it happens, he was not talking about our own much-loved social workers but those of Norway, who four years ago took two little Czech boys into foster care, after one of them told a teacher at nursery school that his Daddy had “groped inside his pyjamas”.

Although no other evidence was given for removing the children, and the strain of the case eventually led their parents to divorce, the Norwegian authorities have refused to return the boys to their distraught mother, who has only been allowed to see them for 15 minutes twice a year and forbidden to speak with them in Czech. It was this which prompted the Czech president Milo Zeman to compare Norway’s child protection system to the Nazis’ Lebensborn forced adoption policy.

A Good News Story

 Progress At Last

Separation and divorce is painful enough for adults, many of whom remain permanently scarred.  In hindsight not a few come to regret their decision to split apart and look back at the conflict and circumstances that led them to that fateful decision, concluding (now) that it was all small change in the grand scheme of things. They regret their immature decisions and hasty actions.  But we have learned that the children of such divorces often are damaged for their entire lives. 

This bad situation is made ten times worse if the divorce is acrimonious.  Far too many divorces have ended up that way, even if the decision to separate initially was reasonably amicable and mutual, due to the involvement of the Family Court.  Courts require lawyers, and lawyers' stock-in-trade is disputation and argumentation, getting the best-deal-no-matter-what for their client.  The resulting anger and bitterness can last decades, inflicting yet far more needless damage upon children. And, not a few lawyers have preferred a long drawn out process because of the higher fee payoff. 

Finally, the NZ government has introduced some reforms which are deconstructing the hostilities.  The Minister of Justice, Judith Collins has announced: