The parliamentary ombudsman has criticised Esbjerg Council for stranding vulnerable children in temporary housing for over two years.
The children were taken by the council from troubled families and placed in Nordstjernen, an emergency housing institution, which had been operating over its capacity for many years.
The situation was brought to light in April after a visit by the parliamentary ombudsman, Jørgen Steen Sørensen, whose role is to investigate complaints about the public sector.
The longest residents have now been offered long-term homes and Sørensen condemned Esbjerg’s slow handling of the children’s cases.
“It’s worrying that the children were housed in emergency housing for two and a half years,” Sørensen told Ritzau. “Throughout that period, these highly-vulnerable children were kept in limbo while important decisions about their future were not being made.”
Esbjerg Council agreed that the situation was not acceptable.
“Of course the children should not live in emergency housing for two and a half years,” spokesperson Hans Erik Møller (Socialdemokraterne) told Ritzau. “But I can’t rewrite history. We can do better in the future.”
The focus on Esbjerg started in 2010 after revelations that the council failed to intervene for several years after it was informed about a man who was repeatedly abusing children sexually.
The national social appeals board, Ankestyrelsen, subsequently investigated 100 of the most complex cases involving vulnerable children and young people. In 2012, they found that there were critical failings in the processing of 77 of the cases by Esbjerg Council.
The ombudsman has demanded a report from the council within the next few weeks about how they ended up parking children in temporary housing for such a long period of time. He also wants the council to report on what the maximum length of time a child should be kept in emergency housing ought to be, and what they intend to do about overcrowding at emergency housing.
“I should point out that we have no criticisms of the actual institution,” Sørensen told Ritzau. “The main problem is the time the young people spend at the institution. It is the council’s responsibility to find a long-term solution to the problem.”
Esbjerg Council has now promised to establish better living conditions for children in the custody of the state.
