Tens of thousands of children exposed to violence or substance abuse at home

Study shows that thousands of children in need of help remain unnoticed

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Thousands of children living in conditions in which they are exposed to violence and substance abuse fail to get the help that they need, says Dr. Mirjam Kalland, a family research expert at the University of Helsinki.
      A substance abuse problem of some kind affects one in six families, while violence afflicts one in five. "For instance, 20 to 30 percent of children in the Helsinki region live in fairly serious risky conditions. Only five to six percent are within the scope of child protection support measures. Quite a few of the children who would need help are never noticed", Kalland says.
      Although there are tens of thousands of such families, the number does not appear in the statistics. There is also no information on how many children get help from other sources, such as their day care centre, school, family counselling, or congregation.
     
Key figures in identifying a need for help are personnel at child health clinics, day care centres, and schools.
      In a study of more than 200 children taken into protective care, it was revealed that before they were taken out of their homes, such children had an average 6.7 risk factors in their lives.
      Such factors included substance abuse by the mother or father, family violence, criminal behaviour by the parents, and neglect of the care of the child.
      "Situations go very far before a child is placed somewhere", Kalland points out.
      Considerable public debate was sparked by a letter to the editor of Helsingin Sanomat, which was published in the newspaper nearly two weeks ago. The writer, the 18-year-old child of an alcoholic, said that she and her younger sister had to deal with their situation on their own.
     
Under current legislation, help without taking the children away is always the primary option.
      "The basic idea of child protection is that family problems are temporary", says Tarja Pösö, Professor of Social Work at the University of Tampere. She feels that the principle is a good one.
      A child is taken away from his or her parents only in an extreme situation. Pösö says that it takes skill to distinguish between temporary problems, and a situation in which the long-term care of a child would be the better alternative.
      Sometimes children alternate several times between home and a care facility. If there are many such switches, it can be very disruptive for the child. However, Kalland says that the matter has not been reliably researched.
      She says that according to some data, children had an average of three, and in the worst of cases, nearly 30 moves back and forth. "This is like poison for a child", Kalland observes.
     
The situation is not made any easier by the shortage of social workers, the heavy workload of the social workers that there are, and the cutbacks in family services.
      Tarja Pösö notes that there are considerable regional differences in procedures and services.
      A proposed new law on child protection would bring a more systematic approach, but ultimately, assessments would continue to take place on a case-by-case basis.
     
The timing of intervention is a thorny issue. Sometimes social workers are accused of exaggerating the problem, while at other times it is said that children are left to wait for things to improve, no matter how bad the situation is in the home.
      "Very rarely does intervention take place too early. Quite to the contrary", says Martti Kemppainen of the Central Union for Child Welfare.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Number of children in protective care continues to grow (4.9.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat