- Some children who are placed in the state youth homes, so-called Sis homes, should instead be placed in the closed child and adolescent psychiatry.
- This is what Sis’ Director General Elisabet Åbjörnsson Hollmark says.
- The authority sees a development where the placed children now have a much greater mental illness – which the youth homes can not always take care of in a good way.
The state youth home receives children according to the law on care of young people, LVU. It is usually children with very extensive problems who are considered to be a danger to themselves or their surroundings.
It is the home municipality’s Social Services that apply for a placement at a Sis home and a court that makes a decision. Sis are shy to receive all children who are referred to their homes, the location is often described as a last resort for the authorities.
The average age of homes is about 16 years. The youngest person who was placed in a Sis home last year was a 10-year-old boy.
At home, there are also young people who have committed crimes and been sentenced to closed youth care.
Ekot has previously in the spring reported that the number of cases of threats and violence at Sis homes has doubled in the last five years.
In the P1 program Kaliber, the agency’s director general Elisabet Åbjörnsson Hollmark now says that the young people who end up in Sis have an increasing mental illness, which the youth homes cannot always take care of in a good way.
– We have employed psychologists in all our youth homes. But this is psychiatric competence required from child and adolescent psychiatry, which is another form of competence. We see that we lack it in the authority, we do not have that assignment, she says.
Of them around 1000 young people who are placed in a Sis home every year should therefore instead have been placed in the regions’ closed Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, in order to receive more appropriate care, according to the Director General.
– Because we see a development where the placed children have a much much greater mental illness than it has been historically. This is how we see and have thoughts about whether we get some children and young people placed with us who should not be with us but with the closed child and adolescent psychiatry, says Elisabet Åbjörnsson Hollmark.
Sofia Enell – senior lecturer in social work at Linnaeus University, who has researched youth homes – shares that picture.
– What we do know is that inpatient places in psychiatry have decreased. There are regions that have no inpatient care at all to offer children and young people. So you can buy from other regions, she says.
In order for children and young people to receive the right care, the care agencies need to cooperate to a greater extent, and primarily look after the needs of young people, and not the respective actors’ assignments, according to Sofia Enell.
– More people must go in and take responsibility. It can not be okay to relinquish one’s responsibilities so that young people end up in these locked institutions.
Is there a need for more places in the closed child and adolescent psychiatry then also or?
– Yes, I think so. It should be based on need. Then I think that you have to keep this at a minimum level, because there are no children or young people who in a longer perspective benefit from being in an institution, regardless of care context, says Sofia Enell.
Source: ICELAND NEWS