Denmark moving to speed up their ‘adoption’ process to take children away from their birth parents
Denmark’s minister for Children and Social Affairs has authored a government proposal making forced “adoptions” easier for authorities, separating children from their birth parents.
Mai Mercado said in an interview with Berlingske that the biological parents’ rights would not be affected by the new rules presented to the Danish parliament on Tuesday.
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The conservative politician claims that the proposal would cut red tape and legal requirements during the process to provide faster outcomes and significantly reduce costs for municipal services.
“This is all with the child’s interest foremost,” she said.
In Denmark a local authority can decide that the biological parents will “likely never” be able to take care of a child, a request which then heads to the Social Appeals Board (“Ankestryrelsen,” or “social anchorage council”) as well as a national government body (the state administration, “Statsforvaltningen”).
Both must green-light the adoption for it to go through.
Under the proposed new rules, the Social Appeals Board would decide alone for or against the adoption. “Ankestryrelsen” is an independent body within the state. It is attached to the Danish ministry for social affairs and integration and acts as an appeal court for decisions in the domain of social and labor law.
A child may not be directly placed with its future adoptive parents until the procedure is completed. In the meantime, a foster family takes care of the child.
Denmark has consistently reinforced its legislation allowing for the forced separation of children from their biological parents. From 2009 to 2015, local authorities could only obtain adoption without the parents’ consent if they could prove that these would “never” be able to take care of their child. Under this system, 13 children were forcibly adopted.
A report published in September 2018 by Ankestryrelsen said 49 municipalities had considered using the forced adoption procedure between October 2015 and March 2018 in 103 to 109 affairs but gave up in most cases.
