Study finds immigrants and native Finns treated differently in foster care cases

Library - articles

Saturday, 18 June 2011 04:03

Written by Johanna Hiitola

Finns’ problems often ascribed to fatigue, immigrants’ problems to lack of parenting skills

A fresh study has found that Finnish administrative courts treat immigrant families and native Finns differently in cases involving decisions on placing children in foster care.
Initial results of the yet-to-be released doctoral thesis of Tampere University social scientist Johanna Hiitola were presented at a child welfare seminar in MIkkeli on Wednesday.
In her study Hiitola examined documents related to decisions in 343 cases in administrative court involving involuntary foster care in 2008. She found clear differences in how the matters of native Finnish and immigrant families were handled.

Court documents would often describe native Finnish mothers as exhausted and fatigued, while the mothers of immigrant families in similar circumstances were said to be incapable of caring for their children.
“According to the documents, a third of native Finnish mothers suffered from exhaustion. None of the mothers of an immigrant background were seen to have exhaustion as the reason for their problems”, Hiitola says.
For instance, the documents indicated that having older children in immigrant families helping their parents in caring for younger siblings was viewed negatively.

There were also differences in the way that problems of domestic violence were described, depending on whether or not native Finns or immigrants were involved.
Violence perpetrated by native Finnish fathers was seen as an isolated problem of the family in question; the family’s culture was not described as problematic.
In cases of violence in immigrant families there were references to a foreign culture as ways of explaining violence that had occurred.

Helsinki Administrative Court judge Anja Talja does not see any differences in the treatment of native Finnish and immigrant families in court.
“Naturally it is very difficult to evaluate one’s own activities, but I have noticed no such differences.”

Decisions on foster care made with the consent of the parent or guardian are made by a municipal social worker. The issues are go to an administrative court if the parents, or if a child over 12 years of age is opposed to the move. Oral arguments are heard whenever one of the parties to the case wants it.
“Immigrant parents often have a Finnish counsel, and they are also offered interpreter services. Sometimes when more unusual languages are involved two interpreters have been needed.”

Hiitola says that with the material that was available to her it is impossible to say if children have been placed into foster care for the wrong reasons, but she feels that there is potential for unfairness in the administrative courts.
“The administrative courts lean heavily on statements of social services officials. This means that a social worker has a big role. For instance, one typical reason for taking a child into foster care is refusal to accept support from social services, even though families do not necessarily understand what is being offered to them”, Hiitola says