Children removed from Indian couple in Norway due to inappropriate behavor

[LaBong]

GoI shouldn't leave no stone unturned to help them to get back the children.

 

[Birbal]

As far as I'm concerned the parents would be morally justified in using violence to get back their kids.

 

[NALANDA]

People in south asia will never believe that such a thing can happen....feedding kids with hand & sleepin with kids...

bizarre..

 

[fd24]

People in south asia will never believe that such a thing can happen....feedding kids with hand & sleepin with kids...

bizarre..

People round the world will be thinking the same buddy. I think we are united in this. Disgraceful social workers - idiots. All normal people will be frowning at Norway - the country should take action to stop their name being tarnished.

 

[Birbal]

This isn't just cultural close mindedness... They are actually kidnapping Indians. You can clearly see their Indian passports in this video: NORWAY MEDIA STEPS2 - YouTube

The Indian government should take this to the UN if it has to.

 

[Birbal]

The parents met with Pratibha Patil: Nightmare in Norway: Indian couple fights to get children back

If diplomatic pressure doesn't work the parents should hire Krzysztof Rutkowski to smuggle the kids out of the country.

 

[fd24]

GoI shouldn't leave no stone unturned to help them to get back the children.

India to take up child custody dispute with Norway

India says it will try to seek an "amicable" solution to a controversial child custody case in Norway.

Two Indian children aged three and one were taken into foster care last May leaving their parents "devastated".

The parents said there were "cultural differences" the authorities took exception to, including sleeping with the children and feeding them by hand.

The child custody case has caused anger in India.

Reports say that Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna is likely to talk to his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Store to win the release of three-year-old Abhigyan Bhattacharya and his one-year-old sister Aishwarya.

"We are in touch with the Norwegian government and we are hopeful that an amicable settlement of this question could be arrived at," Mr Krishna told reporters.

"Whatever support is needed under the circumstances will be provided to the Indian couple," he said.

Relatives of the parents - Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya - have met Indian President Pratibha Patel to seek her intervention.

The children were taken under protective care by Barnevarne (Norwegian Child Welfare Services), which claimed there was an emotional disconnect with the parents.

Anurup Bhattacharya, a geo-scientist, who came to work and live in Stavanger in Norway in 2007, said: "We have been honest and perfect parents. There could be upbringing issues because of cultural differences."

The couple said: "They asked the mother to breast feed baby Aishwariya at scheduled times as a routine instead of feeding her when she cried as is the practice in India."

Gunnar Toresen, head of Child Welfare Services in Stavanger, said it had "a responsibility to intervene if measures at the home are not sufficient to meet a child's needs".

"Examples are when there is every probability that the child's health or development may be seriously harmed because the parents are incapable of taking adequate responsibility for their child."

Earlier this month, an official of the Indian embassy in Oslo visited the foster home where the children are staying and reported that they were in good health, India's external affairs ministry said.

The Indian embassy has told the Norwegian authorities that the children are being deprived of the benefits of being brought up in their own cultural and linguistic environment.

It said is was important that the children should return to India so that they could be brought up in familiar surroundings under the care of their extended family.

Glad to see somethings been done to unite the family

BBC News - India to take up child custody dispute with Norway

 

[ashokdeiva]

I read this story in Hindu and found that there are peculiar things that are highlighted and some important facts that are not highlighted. The Norway authorities have found that mother to be a depression patient and ill tempered. and it is said because of this the child are taken away.
Many women in developing countries have this bi-polar disorder. Women in Man dominated society tend to this discease often because they at some point try to be jelous of their husband. they wanted to out perform their husband in the social status, My own experiance that i have seen in my mom as she is a bi-polar disorder patient.

 

[Birbal]

Looks like they'll finally be returned to the custody of the grandparents in India (and I expect the parents will also join them there).

But can they give back the time that was taken away from them? Can they give back that 7 months of loss of cultural and linguistic exposure? Each of the social workers who took the kids away should be made to spend 7 months in an Indian prison as punishment for their actions.

 

[RazPaK]

Indian prison

Lmao. That's a very extreme punishment.

 

[takeiteasy]

Custody row: Norway refuses to hand over kids after kin's flip-flop

NEW DELHI: Following the collapse of an agreement to bring two Indian children in foster care in Norway back home collapsed, the Norwegian child welfare services have said they were looking at next steps in the case that has dominated headlines in India.

Norway refused to hand over Abhigyan (3) and Aishwarya (1) Bhattacharya to their uncle, who, after a series of dramatic flip-flops apparently appeared unwilling to take them back to India where they might be the subject of a bitter custody battle between a set of warring parents, including a mother who is believed to be suffering from depression.

A hearing scheduled for Friday has been postponed. A statement from the child welfare services in Norway said they were looking at next steps in the case after discussions with the family and their lawyer, the Stavanger district court. "The case was due to be heard on 23 March on the condition that the parties entered into an agreement that care of the children should be awarded to their uncle in India. The conflicts over the last few days between the parents and their respective families mean that the conditions for entering into an agreement of this kind are no longer present."

The statement said though the process had gone according to plan until now, the recent events in the family, where the father of the children, Anurup Bhattacharya decided to walk away from home, alleging that his wife, Sagarika, had been assaulting him and was the real problem, almost acquitting the Barnevernet. Following these dramatic developments, Gunnar Toresen, head of the Child Welfare Services was quoted as saying, "Over the last few days, both the parents and the uncle of the children have changed their position several times on the agreement that had originally been reached. This has caused the Child Welfare Service to doubt their motives as far as the agreement is concerned. The conflicts over the last few days have revealed that the necessary foundation for an agreement does not exist. The Child Welfare Service is no longer confident that the parties wish to enter into a genuine agreement. Over the last few days, the parties to the agreement have provided conflicting and different information, both to the Child Welfare Service and to the media, on their positions in the case," Mr Toresen said.

Its clear that that family has been under extreme pressure, particularly as the case has assumed a public profile in this country, with the foreign minister SM Krishna taking a personal interest. The Norwegians appear to understand that it is difficult for all of them to take coherent decisions under so much of scrutiny. That apparently has strengthened their resolve to keep the children in Norway. "In the light of the great uncertainty that now prevails, the Child Welfare Service cannot maintain that a move to India would be in the best interests of the children. Even if the parents and the children's uncle should nevertheless now want to sign an agreement, the Child Welfare Service does not have sufficient confidence that an agreement would be fulfilled as intended, because the necessary consensus and understanding between the parties and their families does not exist. This means that the children could be caught up in a very unfortunate tug of war in India," Mr Toresen said.

Custody row: Norway refuses to hand over kids after kin's flip-flop - The Times of India

 

[Killswitch]

Just Ignore RazPak.

 

[Birbal]

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : One tragic story among many

Had the Norwegian CWS displayed greater sensitivity, it would certainly have obtained better results, averted a massive one-sided media campaign and a diplomatic row.
The Bhattacharya case is a particularly tragic one. A marriage arranged long-distance by the parents because both the boy and the girl are “Mangliks.” The couple met just a few days before they married and the wife flew out to Norway with the husband.

Sagarika, the wife, became pregnant shortly after and went back to Kolkata, staying on with her parents for over a year until her baby son was 14 months old. The husband says that the boy Abhigyan started showing “characteristics of autism” very early on but did not receive adequate care in the Chakraborty home.

Whatever the truth of these claims, the fact remains that when Ms Bhattacharya returned to Norway, the child's condition steadily worsened. The natural evolution of his Attachment Disorder coupled with the alienation of his mother, who suddenly found herself without the family support she had enjoyed in Kolkata, was certainly a contributing factor.

The couple sought help through a kindergarten group for families (more like a playgroup) and Abhigyan's lack of development was observed and notified to the Child Welfare Service (CWS).

The CWS got actively involved in February 2011. While the father “understood the problems better” and was willing to change his lifestyle and make himself more available to his family, albeit belatedly, the mother was described as “rigid, uncooperative” and in denial. The CWS decided to remove the children because they considered their continued presence in a house where there was almost constant bickering and shouting as harmful to their development.

Welfare worker steps in

But the CWS showed unbelievable cultural insensitivity, particularly through the clumsy use of an English welfare worker, Michelle Middleton. Her report, which is both rambling and confused, begins with a gratuitous reproach: the father does not own a car and so stays away from home for too long (as if it is his fault that he has to depend on public transport). She also reproaches him for not speaking Norwegian. A little later in the same report she says: The father gets his priorities wrong. He is learning Norwegian and taking driving lessons and so has little time for his family. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The Bhattacharyas took an extreme and immediate dislike to Ms Middleton whom they described as superior, bossy and contemptuous. Sagarika's poor English and strong Bengali accent appears to have influenced how the Englishwoman judged this middle class Indian couple. The CWS was astounded when this reporter pointed to an obvious colonial disconnect.

The reports are poorly written and presented — the names are often spelt incorrectly showing a lack of respect and rigour. Aishwarya is occasionally spelt as Aiswarya at other times as Asherya.

If the CWS had shown greater sensitivity and taken a less ham-fisted approach it would certainly have obtained better results, averted a massive one-sided media campaign and a diplomatic row. Removing the children through stealth and then hanging on to them by challenging the first verdict of the County Committee for Social Affairs smacks of both hubris and arrogance (see Chronology).

CWS' mandate

The CWS has a mammoth budget of 7.7 billion Nok per year and there is a series of measures it can take to help troubled families. For instance, it could have taken the children into temporary care and sent the mother to a rest home, offered home help or one of a myriad measures at its disposal. The problem is that the CWS prefers taking children away because it tends to believe that it is difficult, long and arduous to help damaged parents who, in turn, are in the process of damaging their own children. Therefore, the CWS argues, it is better for children to be placed in stable foster environments rather than invest time, effort, resources and patience in parents who might never reform. The CWS reads its mandate in an extremely narrow way — that of protecting children and placing their interests above all else, even if desperate parents have to be sacrificed in the process.

The mandatory confidentiality also gives the CWS tremendous power, weakens accountability and obfuscates Norway's famous transparency. No reliable statistics are available on how well or badly children placed in foster care in adulthood. In France, where about 10,000 children are placed in foster homes or state-run institutions away from their parents, statistics show that 34 per cent of them end up as vagrants or tramps. When compared to other western democracies, the number of children taken into care as a proportion of the population in the Scandinavian countries is alarmingly high. In Norway, with a total population of just under five million, placed in care 12,492 children in 2011 as compared to 10,000 by Britain or France, which have populations of roughly 60 million each.

While there is no doubt that an effective child protection agency is needed, and the CWS has done some remarkable work in saving children from parents who were alcoholics, drug addicts, child abusers or paedophiles, it has also damaged hundreds of families through an excess of zeal. True, an appeals process exists in Norway. But it is long and time consuming and by the time the court is ready to hand back the custody to the parents, judges can also take the view that the child, who in the meantime has formed strong bonds in its foster home, had best be left there undisturbed. In its attempts to attain an exemplary ideal, the CWS is accused by its critics of being “inhuman in order to be human.”

Child's environment

The sanctity of the child's biological environment should be preserved except in very exceptional circumstances, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) tells us. The Convention acknowledges that every child has certain basic rights, including the right … to be raised by his or her parents within a family or cultural grouping, and to have a relationship with both parents, even if they are separated. The Convention obliges states to allow parents to exercise their parental responsibilities.

In Norway, the thinking seems to be going in the opposite direction. The Raundalen Commission's report on fostering and childcare has recommended that instead of the biological attachment principle (present in Norway's current legislation through provisions such as: the duty to carry out home based measures; the threshold for takeover of care, parents' visitation rights or the restitution of care after placement) the “development supportive attachment principle” should be given precedence. The child should therefore be placed in an environment that supports his development to the exclusion of all other considerations and the sooner that is done the better.

Health board's observations

Norway's system of accountability and checks and balances ensures that the CWS is under constant scrutiny from the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision. Its latest report published on March 5, 2012 severely criticised the CWS saying that 40 out of Norway's 44 municipalities do a poor job of evaluating help measures extended to families facing difficulties. The follow-up of children placed in foster homes is inadequate and the CWS is unable to prove that fostering gave the children placed in care a better life than the one they would have had with their natural parents.

Norway's own statistical bureau, the SSB, shows that some 42,000 children came into contact with the CWS in some way or the other last year — either for help or because of issues related to their development, well-being, health, abuse or negligence. Of these, 32,900 were “evaluated” by the CWS. Sixty thousand children are born in Norway each year. With a budget of 7.7 billion Krone ($1 roughly equals 5.5 NoK) the CWS took into care 12,492 children in 2011, of whom 8,777 were placed in foster homes. The rest were in dedicated, special needs centres, emergency shelters or other care facilities.

Criticism

“That figure is far too high for a country with a population of just under five million,” lawyer Magne Brun, who specialises in cases of autism told The Hindu (see interview, March 22, 2012). “Often the care workers or the foster parents do not have sufficient training and they mistake what are possibly genetic disorders for behavioural problems created by the home environment.”

Several respected lawyers, child psychiatrists, and child development specialists severely criticise the way the CWS does its work. Professor Willy-Tore Morch, a specialist in child development at the University of Tromso, has warned that the CWS takes “hasty and coercive measures.”

Lawyer Arne Seland who has broad experience of handling CWS cases said: “The CWS frequently conducts insufficient investigations of the situations that obtain within families before adopting coercive measures.” He believes this is a problem for both children and parents in terms of legal protection and rule of law.

“The CWS has saved more kids than it has harmed. Yet there are individual instances of CWS high-handedness and errors of commission as well as omission. It needs to learn from them. The CWS also needs to study and document variations in child rearing practices in immigrant communities in Norway and what they mean for the welfare of the child. It is not an easy task. Often these variations are just adaptations to a local milieu and a particular geographic zone with no great implications for the health of the child. But equally often they are harmful to the child, such as excision, certain dress codes or long hours of Koranic studies after school hours. At the same time I think there is a lot of wisdom in many of these immigrant communities that the CWS could and perhaps should take on board. Many immigrant women carry a strong oral tradition that they have inherited from their mothers and grandmothers. I believe that a lot of it could also benefit Norwegian mothers. I hope the CWS will in future have the humility to understand this and internalise it,” a former Norwegian welfare officer, now an international civil servant, told The Hindu.

That there is a cultural problem between Barnevarnet (CWS) and the families whose children's welfare it is mandated to ensure is evident from the fact that far more immigrant children get taken into care than Norwegians. Immigrants do not know that slapping or hitting a child is a punishable offence in Norway. Speaking loudly, showing off with expensive cars or having lavish weddings — characteristics shared by many immigrant communities, especially from poor or emerging countries — are frowned upon by Norwegians. Taken in terms of per thousand of population, immigrant communities clearly suffer more at the hands of the CWS: 23 per 1,000 children in foster care are non-immigrant; 35 per 1,000 are children born in Norway to immigrant parents while 51 per 1,000 are the children of first generation immigrants.

 

[fd24]

Norway to hand over Indian children in custody row

A child welfare agency in Norway has said it will hand over two Indian children taken into foster care 10 months ago to their uncle.

The Child Welfare Service (CWS) said a Stavanger District Court would make the final decision on 17 April.

Last week, the agency said the children would not be handed over because of reports of "marital problems" between the parents.

Local social services say the parents failed to look after their children.

The parents, Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya, deny this. The couple say "cultural differences" led to the situation, and that the authorities had taken exception to them sleeping with the children and feeding them by hand.

"The CWS now recommends that the uncle takes over care of the two Indian children in the child welfare case and a Stavanger District Court will make the final decision on 17 April," the agency's communication adviser Thomas Bore Olsen said in a statement on Thursday evening.

If the court decided that the children should be removed from the care of the public authorities, "the agreement can be implemented as soon as practicable. The uncle will then take over the care of the children and take them back to India", he said.

Public anger

Earlier this month, the chief welfare agency had said that custody of the children should be awarded to their uncle.

But following media reports of "conflicts" in the family, the Norwegian authorities put off the court hearing scheduled for 23 March.

Indian diplomats who were to go to Norway to monitor the court case also put off their trip.

Three-year-old Abhigyan and one-year-old Aishwariya Bhattacharya were put in foster care by the Stavanger CWS last May, because they felt the children were at risk.

The case has received extensive media attention in India and provoked public anger. Earlier this year the government decided to intervene and try to bring the children back to India.

This became a diplomatic issue between the two countries, with India saying the children should be allowed to live in their own cultural and linguistic environment.

BBC News - Norway to hand over Indian children in custody row

The family should never have been separated - bureaucracy gone mad. Hope they are now going to be left alone and carry on with normal upbringing for the kids

 

[SQ8]

I think the whole episode's start(taking away of the children) triggered Martial problems.
The couple were probably having financial issues which had the kids sleeping in with em..
Or something.
the authorities took em away.. and the marriage broke down.

Lesson to heed..
Unless you are rich and can maintain a healthy lifestyle along with adopting the culture. Stay out of Norway.