Creating a safe environment for children

Unfortunately, children and young people with behavioural problems often find themselves outside of local support structures. These children are socially stigmatized, and often face defeat after defeat. It is about time we recognize that these children represent far more than their negative behaviour. They are people with hopes, dreams, sorrows and longings.

Communities must find ways to embrace children and youth with behavioural difficulties. By providing high-quality professional care services we can help them change their behaviour. This is best accomplished by drawing in the family and supporting it as a whole. By increasing the resources of the family and the surrounding environment, we lay the foundation for positive change.

About 5% of all children and youth have serious behavioural problems. In the 1990s, the Ministry of Children and Equality made this group a top priority. Today, the number of children and young people with serious behavioural problems remains alarmingly high. We must equip families to take better care of what they cherish most: their children.

More than 40,000 children and youth received child-welfare services in the course of 2006. This was an increase of 3.1 percent. Most children are helped while living at home; they are provided with such benefits as supportive contacts, day-care services and periodical respite or relief care outside the family. We are trying to create child-welfare services that are more open and more collaborative, particularly with regard to day-care centres, health clinics and schools. But we cannot ignore the fact that certain aspects of the society we live in are problematic for people who are vulnerable in different ways.

We must come into contact with these youngsters as early as possible, so that we can either prevent the emergence of negative conduct or turn it around. If we act early enough, we can help children with serious behavioural troubles onto a positive developmental path. The government and I are determined to help children as well as their families and support networks to use their abilities, resources and potential in a constructive way. In a small country like Norway, we have no other choice.

Society is undergoing rapid change, and it does not appear that the number of children and youth with behavioural problems will be going down in the near future. As a first step to help these children, I promise to support the development and evaluation of research to reveal how serious behavioural problems can be reduced and how positive conduct can be reinforced. Secondly, we have put in place a new institutional model for treating children and youth with serious behavioural troubles. Institutions have now been established in each of the child welfare system's five regions, and a similar institution has been established in Oslo. The model, called MultifunC (for Multifunksjonell behandling i institusjon og nærmiljø, or Multifunctional Treatment in Institutions and the Local Environment), is being developed in close cooperation with Swedish authorities.

Last but not least, we are raising the standards of programmes and measures we put into practice. Children and young people struggling with serious behavioural issues should not be subjected to measures that may not be effective and may even be harmful. Good intentions are not enough! Results and consequences must also be good.

Like all children and young people, those with behavioural problems have a right to a sound environment in which to live and develop. The government’s goal is to help children and those near to them to use their abilities, resources and potential in a constructive way. We should all do our part to support the professional care system. Let's pitch in locally to help all children and youth -- including those who display poor conduct! Setting limits while demonstrating generosity and loving care in the neighbourhood costs nothing, yet it may be all that's required to create a society that benefits everyone.