Norway: Parents of children with ME threatened with child welfare authorities

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) with article on ME and child welfare authorities.

One of four parents with children with ME say they have been threatened of child welfare authorities from school, health personell or others.
A father with two children under assessment for ME tells about notifications given about his children to the child welfare authorities from the school and from health personell.
Olav Osland from the Norwegian ME Association says they often hear stories like this, and it is due to lack of knowledge about the disease.

A district medical officer says these notifications isn't necessarily due to suspicions towards the families, but a way to assess a situation.

NRK - Foreldre med ME-syke barn trues med barnevern
Google translation - Parents with ME sick children are threatened with child welfare

 

I think it is odd of the district medical officer to dismiss this problem. Surely people must understand how traumatic and frightening such notifications can be for families, particularly when dealing with a system without proper experience and knowledge about ME.

 

This is a huge problem in Norway, sadly. The Norwegian Psychological Association recently wrote a very good article about a family with several members with ME and how traumatic it was for them to get the child welfare authorities involved.

ME-syke kjemper for å bli trodd
google translation: ME-patients fighting to be believed

 

Great. So when families are already under stress, and may also be experiencing additional financial worries if a parent suddenly needs to become a carer, the very people who are supposed to help and support come along and frighten them some more.

(Sarcasm)

 

Yes, surely there must be better ways to assess a situation, like simply asking "How can we help?".

 

Not exactly related - but this also makes me think of the parents caught up in the "service evaluation" piece by Crawley.
The majority of those young people did not have ME, but I am sure all of the families were traumatized by the letter and evaluation.
It seems to me that child welfare groups in many (most?) countries know very little about ME and yet these groups are charged with protecting young people. (In the US there are also Adult Protective Services.)
There is an imperative need to educate these groups and prevent trauma and harm to families!

 

Ironically, I know of a case of a teen with a serious, chronic and very well understood condition that had very serious potential consequences. This teen's home life was difficult and the condition was not being managed. There was a fair bit of absenteeism from school.

The hospital team responsible for treating were extremely concerned and very supportive to the kid. Child services were useless. They seemed to deliberately drag their feet as the teen was due to turn 16 end would then no longer be there problem. Child services complete ignored the medical team.

There was never any question that child services were going to actually do anything even though this teen was clearly not being properly cared for and would potentially soon be left with life changing health problems.

The school didn't seem that bothered either.

There is no consistency and seems to be little common sense.