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It is a country that takes care of its residents when they fall on hard times and there are robust social safety nets.
That's why there's no reason to believe the father is telling the truth when he says that the children were removed from his care with limited visitation due to job loss.
Speculation on my part that leaving his children with their bio mother who suffered from Schizophrenia may have been a contributing factor. Their bio mother was unlikely to be able to care for herself, let alone 3 children. They may have been neglected.
We don’t know how often the bio father travelled for work or the duration of travel.
The reports are short on details and long on hyping the Muslim thing.
I don’t fault them for failing to find a Russian Orthodox family, I fault them plenty for not finding at least a secular family - which you can’t tell me don’t exist. The children were in care long enough that the government had time to find a different family once he complained. Regardless of what the parents did or didn’t do, the Swedish social services responsible for the girls’ placement failed to adequately do their job. Placing those kids in a practicing Muslim home was professional malpractice.
Keeping multiple siblings intact in the foster care system anywhere is challenging.
We don’t know why the bio father only had limited visitation. Perhaps his being on the road was a factor.
Not sure the religion or lack thereof of the foster family made a difference beyond that the father used it to rationalize kidnapping and as leverage to claim asylum in Poland and made for a juicy story.
For emergency placement, no. For more than very short term, absolutely they do what they can to accommodate family religious beliefs. If the family has strong religious ties and a suitable home can not be found that practices the child’s religion they place the child in a secular home or quasi-secular home (go to church only Christmas/Easter, no daily prayers). The goal is to not place them in a home that practices clashing religious views. A Jewish child would never be knowingly be put in a Muslim home for more than a day or two. I’ve had students go through this and there have been court cases on it.
This went down in Sweden with a population of 10 million.
Eastern Orthodoxy follows the Gregorian calendar while Western religions follow the Julian calendar. Easter is a huge deal for Eastern Orthodox followers, involving cultural fasting and blessings of meal baskets, remembering of the dead and so on.
Assuming this family were devout, the children would have been out of sorts, no matter where they landed. Language may have also been a challenge.
So much is unknown, beyond that the children were placed with a Muslim family and the presumption that was a bad move.
In a year’s time they couldn’t find a secular family closer than 300 kilometers (186 miles) away to take on three sweet looking girls? Bull crap.
No idea.
Most families willing to take on longer term foster care are unwilling/ unable to accept multiple siblings.
Why assume a different outcome had the foster family been secular beyond that it would not be a sensational news story.
We know absolutely nothing about the Muslim foster family beyond their religion. Apparently, that’s enough for those inclined to assume nearly 2 billion people are alike.
In a year’s time they couldn’t find a secular family closer than 300 kilometers (186 miles) away to take on three sweet looking girls? Bull crap.
Where did you get 300 kilometers? They were 30 kilometers away based on Swedish news stories.
There's a huge crisis in foster care in Sweden as in the US. It can be incredibly difficult to find long-term, stable foster families for one child older than 10, much less a family group of 3.
I plan on being a foster parent. Should I not be allowed to do so because I'm Jewish? Most of the foster care families I know are Jewish and while the children's religions are respected (and never Jewish), the family is not going to start cooking bacon or give up observing Shabbat because they have a foster child who is not of their faith.
Keeping multiple siblings intact in the foster care system anywhere is challenging.
We don’t know why the bio father only had limited visitation. Perhaps his being on the road was a factor.
Not sure the religion or lack thereof of the foster family made a difference beyond that the father used it to rationalize kidnapping and as leverage to claim asylum in Poland and made for a juicy story.
You do realize that they are having serious issues with christian persecutions in Sweden?? Just think of it this way. An atheist liberal family living in California has fallen on hard times, their children are taken away and placed in a foster family, just so happens the family are conservatives who just moved from Texas, they go to church every Sunday so naturally they will take the children to church with them. Now in this scenario would/should the atheist family be okay with this situation??
You do realize that they are having serious issues with christian persecutions in Sweden?? Just think of it this way. An atheist liberal family living in California has fallen on hard times, their children are taken away and placed in a foster family, just so happens the family are conservatives who just moved from Texas, they go to church every Sunday so naturally they will take the children to church with them. Now in this scenario would/should the atheist family be okay with this situation??
I don't speak for all atheists, but I wouldn't have a problem with my kids being exposed to other views as long as it's done kindly and without coercion. It might even be a good cultural experience for them. I think I would be much more worried about fixing the situation and getting them back in general than fixated on that. Of all the wrong and worrisome things that can happen to children who are in the system, I don't think "being exposed to a religion we don't believe in" would even make the the top one hundred.
"On Wednesday a Polish court decision, ruling that Swedish social services had violated an EU convention that forbids placing children in foreign cultural environments, ended a forced separation of a father and his daughters who are 12, 6 and 4 years old."
Placing three girls into muslim family is unacceptable as far as I am concerned, and I am glad that Polish court saw it the same way.
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