Sunday, October 29, 2017

Uannouced visits is often not enough. Replace the staff who does the work can be an improvement

In Denmark, residential programs are visited by audit teams. They come unannouced. The reason for this method is to prevent the residential programs to arrange deals with the teenagers in treatment so they either is not in the facility during the audit or they get something in return for describing the facility as fine and dandy.

But a recent case shows that the employees who do the audits also should be given different facilities to audit so the management of the facility cannot befriend certain employees at the audit teams so the reports are altered to be perfect instead of pointing out the conditions which need to be fixed or improved.

The social services pay for most of the treatment programs in Denmark. It is the taxpayers who suffer when money is wasted.

And the recent years despite improvements have shown overexpenses which is money wasted on treatment program of poor quality or even illegal treatment programs which have not been approved.

In some cases, teenagers were sent to Sweden or Norway, which is illegal and totally against the laws in Denmark. Money were paid and while the treatment program was shut down, the taxpayers need answers to who approved the payments. Some teamleaders need prosecution but the system lack interest in doing so. How can we then prevent a similar situation from happening in the future?

A foster mom was paid 3 times the appropiate sum of money. She often was on holiday and let the teenager alone back home. Who approved this and why was the case-worker or the accountant not held responsible?

The Tvind organization where the leaders are wanted men by the state prosecution continue to run their empire from their private city in Mexico where they control the authorities so they cannot be extradited to Denmark. Over the entire Denmark many departments of social services continue to send children to the facilities they control. How can this happen? Should they not stop this traffic until the management of Tvind gives up and come back to face the justice they deserve?

On of their facilities "Småskolen Ved Nakkebølle Fjord" got nice reviews until the audit team were changed. Suddenly new eyes on the conditions changed the reviews. Now they had to fix a lot of things.

The facility changed the management. One person got a new job. The managers at Tvind rotate whenever criticism get bad. It is enough for the audit system it seems. Because then a number of years can go by before things to bad again and they have to rotate again. It is a never ending story with no real improvements for the children.

If we look at the work, various human rights organizations have lobbied for over the last decades, the conditions for the children in treatment have gotten better. The employees can no longer confiscate cell phones because the children need them so they can call the help hotline, the state has made. Also Internet access is mandated mostly because the public school system is now run with books and lesson put on the Internet, so without Internet Access it is impossible to make homework.

However it seems that treatment programs sometime fly under the radar. 60 days in prison suspended for a male counselor having sex with a 15 year old girl is too short a sentence according to our opinion. It can be done better.

So we will continue to feed human rights organizations in Denmark with news we find so conditions for the children placed in treatment homes can be improved.

It is our money. We who goes to work every single day and pay taxes shall see our money be put to work in a way which improves the lives of the children in placement. Nothing less can satisfy us. Period !

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