SAGARIKA BHATTACHARYA met her one-year-old daughter Aishwarya and three-year-old son Abhigyan on Wednesday. PRAVASI TODAY presents her version of what happened in Norway. Published in May 2012 by Pravasi Today.
Category: Norway
In Their Own Words: The story of Ken and Vibeke in Norway
“It feels like everything is geared to losing invaluable time, so that we will be met with the argument that our daughter has got too attached to the foster home and that it will not be in the best interest for her to return to us.”
In Their Own Words: The story of DS and her family in Norway
“Later that month, I was arrested in Denmark with the children. We were taken on a night boat to K.. As we walked down the gangway the two younger children were crying desperately. An employee on the boat commented: “So terrible to hear” while we walked past where he worked. Nevertheless, CPS constantly claim that our children don’t want to go home.’
ML v Norway
Judgment of European Court of Human Rights on Right to Family Life under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Date: 7 September 2017.
The Iron Hand that Rocks the Cradle by Marianne Haslev Skanland, The Hindu, 2012
Almost all families attacked by Norway’s ‘child protection services’ are good and loving. Some need help, but most of them need nothing other than to be left in peace.
Foster Care: Its Time to Think Out of the Box by Suranya Aiyar
“We must reject the ideology of the Western child welfare services that makes a split between the interest of the child on the on hand and the presence of parents and extended family in its life on the other.”
Understanding and Responding to Child Confiscation by Social Service Agencies
Suranya Aiyar surveys the principles and practices of Western child protection systems. Published in 2012 in Pravasi Today.
Chopping and Changing to Suit Its Ends by Suranya Aiyar
Suranya Aiyar writes: “The blanket confidentiality under which the Norwegian Child Welfare Service (CWS) operates is exceptional in family law and extraordinary for a public authority in a democracy……In the age of WikiLeaks, the Norwegian tolerance for a powerful public authority like the CWS deflecting inquiry by pointing to a confidentiality rule is strange.” Reflections on how confidentiality laws could be are shielding the mistakes and bias of the Norwegian child protection agency. Published in 2012 in the Hindustan Times.
What Does Gunnar Toresen Know About Children? by Suranya Aiyar
On the removal of children from a Bengali family by Norway’s notorious child protection agency in the famous Bhattacharya Case of 2012, Suranya Aiyar writes; “those who speak of racism and cultural intolerance only skim the surface of what is happening here. The question to be asked is what grotesque conception of family, of babyhood, of motherhood is at work here?” Published in 2012 by Kafila.
Norwegian Child Protection Hits Immigrants Hard by Aage Simonsen
Based on his experience monitoring child protection cases as member of a municipal monitoring committee, biologist Dr Aage Simonsen argues that the initially positive process of utilising the welfare state machinery to eradicate social divisions, has created an ideology with scant place for difference and a demand for uniformity, especially by Norway’s child protection services which view everything departing from a textbook standard as potentially harmful for children. This often results in foreigners and newcomers to the country being singled out.