It is not true that you think child protection is important, Kent Ranum

I work in Childcare the family service, the care unit. My job is monitoring children placed in foster homes. Last week I came across a video from Trondheim municipality. In the video, Mayor Kent Ranum asks if the viewer would like to become a foster home. He calls himself a “foster home ambassador”.

The video made me more than upset. One can say a lot about how the budgets look like in the municipality, but the fact that Ranum calls himself a “foster home ambassador” in the same week that I am at a redundancy meeting together with my colleagues in the Children and Family Services makes no sense.

That’s why I have lots of questions for you, Kent Ranum.

The video has an exciting angle. I think I understand that you believe that being a father is the most important job you have, despite your exciting resume. I think that’s good.

I also think I register that you encourage people to become foster homes. I also think that’s good, but I’m still a little surprised, because it’s not true that you think that child protection is so vitally important, is it?

Feel free to correct me if i’m wrong. I know that you, together with our other politicians, have calculated that the Child and Family Service has an additional expenditure of many millions for 2024. You say we must save, we must downsize.

We have to do more, with fewer people, and we will do that “well enough” – completely in line with the new Child Protection Act. You are not making this easy for us, I must say.

In addition, you are there, on the municipality’s beautiful Facebook page, advertising fosterhjem.no. This is where the interesting aspect comes in. Do you know what it takes (besides generous people with big hearts) for a foster placement to be successful? There is good, professional, guiding and supportive follow-up from the child protection service.

And you know what which is needed to provide good, professional, guiding and supportive follow-up from the child welfare service? It is primarily a good relationship.

Do you know what it takes to have a good relationship? It is time. Time for subjects, time for the children, for the parents and for the foster parents, time to build a scaffolding around the most vulnerable we have in our society.

With downsizing, there will be less time. Much less time.

I have to say that when I saw this video, I thought it was like seeing Geir Moen come sprinting into a rehabilitation center for people who have had a foot amputated and say: – Hey guys, the most important thing in life is to be able to walk two legs, I encourage you all to try, to give it a chance! But, you have to do it WITHOUT help!

It is not easy to take you seriously, Mayor Ranum, when you say on the one hand: Child welfare must save and downsize, our most vulnerable children and families are not worth investing in. While on the other side you say: Tut tut, stay in a foster home, be generous!

It might not help to shame people into foster care with a video like that, when you and your colleagues have no intention of investing in their follow-up?

I don’t knowbut I hope that you yourself realize that this was too stupid.

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