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Swedish out-of-home care has been subject to major changes in recent times. Foster care is the most common form of out-of-home care—and the principally preferred option—but lately the number of placements in privately run residential homes has risen. It is not possible in the Swedish context to discuss the current situation and trends in residential care without taking foster care into consideration. Changes in the field of foster care affect residential care and vice versa, because both decisions are made by local authorities. This chapter presents an overview of the “landscape” of out-of-home care in Sweden and discusses the changing role of residential care in that landscape, along with the possible explanations for the most important alterations that have taken place.

The discourses and debates on errors and mistakes in child protection in Sweden hold many different sub-themes. Relatively recently, the Swedish state both recognised and apologised to persons maltreated in the Swedish child welfare system before 1980. At times, the discourse has been dominated by parents’ abuse or neglect resulting in child deaths. The role of social services in these cases has been depicted as faulty. Other areas of discourse focus on strengthening children’s rights in child protection, and impact on the day to day work of social services arising in part from the increase in unaccompanied children entering Sweden over recent years. This chapter aims to describe and discuss past and current strategies to avoid and handle errors and mistakes in child protection in Sweden. The chapter describes legal errors, organizational errors and professional errors as well as strategies to handle them. It builds on research from the two authors and others. The strategies are presented in themes, including: a) the different measures within the quality assurance systems – such as mandatory reports of mistreatment to the regulatory authority; b) the strategies to avoid errors and mistakes including increased legislation, control and governmental inspections and more attention to children’s voices; c) strategies originating from professional groups aiming to avoid errors and mistakes. Finally, the chapter discusses possible strategies designed to promote learning from errors and mistakes in social work education and for policy development.

This book presents examples and critical interpretations of social work and child welfare politics from Nordic perspectives. It specifically addresses the questions of the impact of the Nordic sociocultural context for child welfare and social work with children and families. Drawing on contemporary research and debates from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, this book considers how social work and child welfare politics are produced and challenged as global and local ideas and practices. The starting point of this volume is mostly thematic, explorative and eclectic — aiming to cover different topical discussions and ongoing transformations within Nordic child welfare — instead of following a single theoretical or methodological approach when analysing Nordic welfare policies and practices. An overview of the chapters included in this book is also provided.

This chapter draws on comparative research by others and analysis of four international case studies which further illustrate key features of emotional politics. In Australasia, the forces of colonialism are evident in the intensely painful intergenerational memories of Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children in Australia and in constructions of child abuse as a ‘Maori problem’ in New Zealand. These resonate with the themes of disgust and shame discussed in Chapter 3. In the Netherlands, a series of cases drew a strongly emotional national response and led to reforms to services. The status of Sweden as a model country is relevant for understanding the historical legacy of national shame from the ‘children’s Gulag’ of the 1980s and how this shapes contemporary services. New York City exemplifies the crisis-reform-crisis cycle driven by an intense political and media focus on children who have died. The political impossibility of risk and the role of successive city mayors in stamping their personal authority on reforms resonate with themes in Chapter 4. Reforms prioritised social control – particularly of Black mothers - with a pervasive regime of investigation that caused deep resentments. This anger fuelled parent-activism, where parents and allies fought to re-orientate services towards social justice.

The chapter gives a general description of the Swedish system for placing a child outside his/her home. The placement can be decided on either voluntary or involuntary grounds. A characteristic feature of the Swedish system is that lay-persons are involved in the decision-making at various levels. On a certain date in 2012, nearly 21,000 children and young persons were placed in care outside their own homes. Approximately 75 percent of them were placed in care on voluntary grounds and 25 percent on involuntary grounds. Although the Swedish system is considered to be in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the system has been criticized, for example, for lacking the genuine child-perspective that the UN Convention specifies.