[teddyh]

If the parents continually and habitually spank their children, then yes, they will be removed. But you must remember that this is a society in which this is abnormal behavior; it is not your society. Please do not assume that your UK experience of social acceptance of this practice (or, for that matter, foster care and families) translate to Sweden.

Also, if we are talking about a one-time incident, that’s a different matter – I said parents risk losing the kids, no more.

[electromagnetic]

Except there was the Italian politician a couple years ago who was arrested because he dragged his kid back into a restaurant by his collar. Social Services tried to take his kid away until it came out who he was.

I'm not assuming my experience with the UK system is indicative of the Swedish one, but statistics don't lie and the abuses in foster care are at similar rates in the major European countries and all of the anglosphere with varying rates of acceptance of corporal punishment.

I know a study in 2010 put the session abuse rate against males in the Swedish system at 42%, which again is against males who are at low risk of sexual abuse.

Seriously, you might want to look into your own system before you tout it as an example to the world, because its an example of what not to do.

Again, unless Swedes are mass murdering sociopaths there is no reason for it to have 3 times as many foster children than Germany. That's a gross amount of children your system has exposed to sexual abuse.

[netrus]

As you seem to have a lot of insight into this topic: What do you think are the reasons for high abuse rates in foster families? I would think that the hugh number of resonable nice people interested in adoptin children in combination with the possibility to screen them would lead to an above-average care-quality in foster families. Why not? I could imagine that people apply for the wrong (financial) reasons (easy to fix), children that are difficult to deal with because of their history or a lack of social bond between the children and their parents (both hard to fix). Any insights on this issue?

[electromagnetic]

From what I've seen the biggest issue is that people do it for the money, which I think is likely the primary cause for physical abuse in the system.

I think sexual abuse in the system comes from the targeting of at risk youths, which is why Sweden disturbs me so much. Departmental reviews in England & Wales and Scotland report around 20% allegations of sexual abuse in foster homes, so Sweden having 42% suggest a severe lack of auditing of their carers for histories of abuse.

I think compounding issues are 50% of kids have a serious medical condition, 20% have mental health issues. So the stressors are significantly higher on carers, which in turn is why foster parents are paid so along with child care benefits generally a parent can be home to take care of the children.

The abolition of the orphanage system inundated the foster system, so we went from 1 person caring for 5+ kids to 1 or 2 caring for 1 kid. I don't think the orphanage system was necessarily better, but it would be much easier to eliminate abuses.

Honestly I think putting abusers through court ordered anger management and parenting classes would be far better than putting kids in foster care, because the fact is adoption rates decline with age and far too many kids graduate the system, because teenagers simply don't get adopted.

I think modernising the orphanage system would alleviate some of this issue. If teenagers aren't being adopted take the practical approach where they can be in an orphanage, make friends and have a social worker who's invested in their progress, which would mean the foster system would need lower financial incentives and thereby you would get more kind-hearted people and less people wanting the money.

It's a supply and demand issue essentially, and subsidizing demand always inevitably leads to problems.