Children held for years, Swedish care orders rest on suspicion, parents face closed loop of social services and courts

• Sveriges Radio Ekot reports that children have been kept in care for years without hard evidence that parents fabricated illness.
• In one case, two brothers with leg pain and muscle weakness were placed in an HVB home after authorities concluded they were not ill.
• The case points to a due-process problem: healthcare assessments, social services decisions and court rulings can stack on top of one another before any allegation is proved.
• The immediate cost is borne by the children and parents; the public system pays for long placements, legal proceedings and repeated reviews.

Two brothers with leg pain and muscle weakness were placed in an HVB home, a residential care facility for children, after Swedish social services and healthcare concluded they were not sick. According to Sveriges Radio Ekot, children in Sweden can remain in compulsory care for years when parents are accused of fabricating or inducing illness, even when no proof is presented.

Ekot’s reporting centres on cases linked to allegations resembling what clinicians call factitious disorder imposed on another, once widely described through the Münchhausen-by-proxy label. The practical effect is plain enough: once healthcare staff suspect a parent, that suspicion can move into a social services investigation, then into an application under the LVU, the Care of Young Persons Act, and from there into administrative court. Each institution cites the others. The threshold is no longer a criminal standard of proof but a welfare assessment about risk, and the child can stay removed while the case drags on through reviews and appeals. For families with limited money, time or medical backing, the route back is narrow.

The brothers described by Ekot said they cried at night for Alvedon because of pain and were denied it. That detail matters because these cases do not stop at paperwork or hearings; they decide who is allowed to interpret a child’s symptoms and who is ignored. If the state decides the illness narrative itself is suspicious, every later complaint can be folded into the original suspicion. A child saying he hurts may be treated as evidence of coaching rather than evidence of pain.

The system also spreads the cost. Municipal social services finance placements that can last for years. Courts process repeated reviews. Families lose income and spend what they have on lawyers and expert opinions, if they can obtain them at all. When a removal is later reversed, the lost time is not restored. The child has still spent birthdays, school years and ordinary evenings somewhere else.

Ekot’s investigation leaves several questions hanging over Sweden’s child-welfare system: how often these care orders are later overturned, what independent safeguards exist before long placements are imposed, and how a parent is supposed to challenge a chain of decisions built on suspicion rather than demonstrable abuse. In the case Ekot describes, two boys who said they were in pain spent that time in state care while adults argued over whether the pain existed.

Källor: Sveriges Radio Ekot