Izvor: N1 televizija, 16.Jul.2018, 10:20 (ažurirano 02.Apr.2020.)
State has taken 5,668 kids from parents in Serbia since 2013
Social services in Serbia took 5,668 children from their parents in the last five years, prompting an argument that they had more power than they should, the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti reported in its weekend edition.
The Ministry of Work, Employment, Social and Veterans Affairs is in charge of social services which control their partners – foster families – but the daily said that social workers had a key say in separating children from their parents.
They determine >> Pročitaj celu vest na sajtu N1 televizija << the suitability of a biological family, the level of a child vulnerability, and they can call on urgency and relocate a child without the parents’ consent and a court ruling.
They also decide if and when the parents should visit the child, for how long and under whose supervision.
The Ministry told the daily that the Family Law stipulated the “right of children to live with the parents can only be revoked by court order when it is in the child’s best interest.”
The exception applies, the Ministry says, when a child is in “an immediate danger.” In such cases, the children are taken away temporarily.
However, the daily said, the Ministry avoided to answer the question whether social services could take a child away without any prior written note.
“The problem is that social services are given too much power such as an official status, secrecy in work and urgency in a procedure. That opens the door to possible abuse,” Dragisa Popovic, an attorney in law specialised with family affairs, told the daily.
They (social workers) decide. The question is how strict control the respective institutions have over them while they simulate a child’s serious vulnerability. For how long a temporary wardship will last? In what condition will a child be upon the return to the parents, if it happens,” the lawyer asked.
Zoran Cvorovic, a university professor of legal history, insisted that only a court could decide on separating a child from the parents.
“The practice is that under the presumption of urgency and in the name of an ideological absolute called ‘the best child’s interest’, the social services take a temporary wardship,” he said.
That, he adds, “denies an individual the right guaranteed by the constitution, the right to parenthood.”
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