Eksjö forcibly detained Polish children in Poland

Published 11 August 2024 at 14.46

Foreign. A Polish couple who moved home to Poland to escape the Swedish social services and the family home industry have had their children taken into the care of Polish authorities and sent off to family homes in Sweden. Criticism is now growing against the fact that Poland implemented the decision from Eksjö municipality, writes Remix News.

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A Polish court decided that forced removal of the Polish children of the couple Robert and Ewa Klaman were to be executed despite the fact that both the parents and the children were Polish citizens residing in Poland.

The authorities then separated them from their parents and relocated them to Sweden.

Currently, all four of the family's children have been placed in three different foster families in Sweden, where, according to the parents and the children, they are forbidden to speak Polish, which is their mother tongue.

The Swedish authorities have decided to withhold information from the parents about where the children are located and to introduce a “total social restriction”, which means that the couple may not visit their children.

The reason why the children were forcibly taken into custody was, according to social services, that there were suspicions of child abuse in the home.

The children themselves consistently denied any abuse, and the doctors who testified in the case did not conclude that there were any indications on the children's bodies that warranted the conclusion of parental abuse, according to Remix News.

Social services claimed then that the parents practiced an “authoritarian type” of parenting where other forms of punishment occurred, and that the parents kept an “emotional distance” from their children and had a “limited understanding of the children's need for care, emotional availability, stimulation and advice”.< /p>

With this as a basis, the social service decided to take all the children and place them in four different family homes.

A family home is a form of accommodation for forcibly placed children that is run by private individuals – often friends and acquaintances of caseworkers at the social service – which gives the right to a tax-free fee of between SEK 10,000 and 20,000 per month and child.

In the 21st century, the number of forced placements has increased and so has the demand to run lucrative family homes with many children. The industry today constitutes a relatively large part of the Swedish economy with an annual cost of SEK 9 billion, according to Sweden's municipalities and regions.

The decision to place the children in family homes was made by the social services in Eksjö only after the parents returned to Poland . Since all those involved are Polish citizens, without Swedish citizenship, the family did not believe that the Swedish authorities could intervene against them when they had moved back to their home country in a fully legal manner.

But they were wrong. The decision on compulsory detention was first confirmed by a Swedish court and then approved for enforcement by a Polish court, on the basis that Poland undertook to enforce Swedish court decisions.

The affected family has now turned to the Ordo Iuris institute for help, which is a Polish conservative think tank.

The institute has previously helped a Norwegian woman get asylum in Poland together with her young daughter in order to escape Barnevernet, which is a Norwegian equivalent of the Swedish social service and family home industry .