On the road with the KESB
Wednesday morning, 8.30 am. A queue has formed in front of the coffee machine in the small kitchen of the KESB on Weltpoststrasse in Bern. Charlotte Christener, the manager, is queuing like everyone else. «Charlotte, do you have a minute for Mrs Sonderegger? She's on the phone.» Christine Brauchle, the head of the secretary's office, sticks her head in towards the open door as Christener is barely in front. She nods and shrugs her shoulders. The coffee will have to wait. Two minutes later, she strolls through the corridors with a headset on her head. «Yes, I'm still expecting a report. But what can you do?» she says.
There are plenty of people who don't wish the Child and Adult Protection Authority (KESB) in general and its boss in particular well. Hardly a week goes by without headlines such as «Social madness at the KESB», «Vigil against KESB arbitrariness» or «Finally abolish the KESB».
Charlotte Christener and her team have learnt to live with it. The people who make decisions about other people's private lives here every day are not indifferent to the criticism. «Often we can only choose which side we want the criticism to come from,» Christener's deputy Markus Engel will say later today. They don't want to be influenced by this. And certainly not to be intimidated.
Mostly it's about conflicts in the family
9 o'clock. The first meeting of the day. At the informal interdisciplinary meeting, the authority, consisting of a total of seven people - lawyers, social workers and a psychologist - discuss their difficult cases. Markus Engel presents his first «problem child».
The mother, an academic with a migrant background, and the father, a man of the countryside, have joint custody of the two-year-old child, but they have such different views on bringing up children and life in general that the father turned to the KESB after various arguments. The latter appointed an accompanying guardian for the child, who lives with the mother. Most child protection cases involve conflicts between the parents.
«We don't allow ourselves to be influenced by criticism. And certainly not intimidated.»
Charlotte Christener and her team are used to criticism.
Charlotte Christener smiles: «Once again, two complete opposites have come together.» The mother has applied to the KESB to be allowed to visit her relatives in her home country with the child. The father objects: fear of child abduction. «What do we do?» asks Engel, peering over the rim of his glasses. «The parents aren't married?» asks social worker Franziska Voegeli.
Markus Engel nods: «The mother and child have the same name and valid passports. If she wanted to abduct the child, she could simply board the plane with the child and would hardly have informed the father and guardian in advance.»
«What are the facts?» Charlotte Christener wants to know. The lawyer's question. And the underlying fear of the consequences of a hasty decision. «We can't just assume on the off-chance that she'll come back with the child. What if she doesn't? Then we're chicken!» Markus Engel should let the mother comment on the father's objections. The matter is then discussed again.
Placement in a home is justifiable
The next case involves two boys, aged 15 and 16, who came to Switzerland from Africa with people smugglers and grew up with their aunt in Bern. The aunt moved with the boys to another canton, which she should not have done for immigration reasons. The boys ran away, preferring to live in a children's home in the capital rather than with their aunt in a foreign environment. «She pulled the rug from under the boys' feet with the illegal move,» says Franziska Voegeli. That and the boys' consent make placement in the home justifiable.
There were 144 new custody withdrawals in the canton of Bern in 2015. According to estimates by Charlotte Christener and her colleagues, in a good 90 per cent of these cases, the people concerned recognised the necessity of the measure during the process. «So it's far from the case that we're storming homes every day and taking children away from innocent parents,» says Charlotte Christener.
Especially as every case that is opened costs money. This one sentence comes up again and again: «Who pays for it?» Bern is a special case in this respect: unlike in the canton of Zurich, for example, where the municipalities pay for the measures, in Bern the canton itself pays for what the cantonal KESB decrees. This prevents some conflicts with the city, but does not mean that the KESB always feels financially responsible for everything.
The fact that two out of three cases discussed this morning concern children is an exception. As a rule, only a good three out of seven cases are child protection cases.
«It's not like we're storming flats and having children taken away every day.»
Charlotte Christener, President of the KESB
The rest are mostly guardianships for adults, often for older people. The KESB also takes care of this.
And the latest statistics show that since the introduction of the KESB in January 2013, 1.3 per cent fewer child protection measures have been taken each year across Switzerland than before. At the end of 2012, there were 42,381, in 2015 only 40,629. «This is probably mainly due to the fact that more attempts are now being made to find solutions with those affected on a voluntary basis. If this is successful, child protection measures ordered by the authorities are unnecessary,» says Charlotte Christener.
«If the child's welfare is at risk and the parents do not take remedial action on their own initiative or are unable to do so, the child protection authority shall take appropriate measures to protect the child.» This is stated in Article 307, paragraph 1 of the Civil Code. This is the legal mandate of the child protection authority. Just how difficult it can be to fulfil this mandate is demonstrated in the 10 a.m. meeting, in which the current decisions of the KESB are discussed and formally issued. The first and crucial question is: «Are we doing anything at all?»
Assumptions are not facts
Anyone can submit a risk report. Officials who recognise the danger in the course of their duties are obliged to do so. This is what happened in the case presented by Franziska Voegeli. The endangerment report came from the school commission, which suspected domestic violence in the case of four siblings aged between nine and two. The children have behavioural problems, hit other children and reported being beaten with sticks and belts at school. The parents said at a hearing that they did not need any support in bringing up the children and that any injuries were due to playing outside.
«Difficult,» says Markus Engel. «At the moment, we simply don't know enough.» The decision: the parents are instructed to actively participate in an intensive on-site assessment. The authorities cannot and do not want to do more at the moment.
«If we suspect that parents are regularly beating their children, we have to take action.»
Social worker Franziska Voegeli
Franziska Voegeli takes a deep breath. Social work sometimes also means having to endure uncertainty. The lawyers want to know exactly. If you suspect that parents are regularly beating up their children, you have to take action. But that's just it: Assumptions are not facts. Many of the men and women who work here are parents themselves. Markus Engel's office walls are also adorned with numerous children's drawings and the shelves are filled with various Star Wars figures. «It's true that we have more distance from the clients than the guardianship authority used to, and that's entirely intentional,» he explains, rummaging through his documents - lined up in neat piles. «The neighbour should no longer be able to decide on family law matters. We have an overview of the overall situation. The counsellors and clarifiers provided by the municipality are close by. This gives us a holistic picture.»
Distance to the cases is important
The KESB Bern opens around 300 child protection cases every year. «When it comes to children, we'd rather open one dossier too many than one too few,» says Markus Engel. True to the KESB principle «As much as necessary, as little as possible».
Then he pulls a sheet out of a folder, reads it and shakes his head. «Mental illness and domestic violence are a reality in our society. Children can also be directly or indirectly affected by this. Parents with mental health problems often don't realise that they are ill.» Of course, as a father, certain fates affect him more than others. «But at the end of the day, one of the core competences of social workers is to have enough distance.»
«Domestic violence is a reality in our society.»
Markus Engel, Vice President of the KESB
The afternoon passes quietly. Charlotte Christener visits a client in the psychiatric clinic, Markus Engel deals with his cases. However, it is not uncommon for an emergency call to disrupt the day's plans. Like recently, when a baby was deposited in the baby hatch at Inselspital. Markus Engel had to drop everything. The baby needed a name, a birthday, citizenship, a carer and a solution to follow up the hospital stay.
5.00 pm. Charlotte Christener and her colleague Raffaele Castellani return from the clinic. «She no longer talks to us at all,» says Christener about the client. She is also used to this by now. Just like the fact that the KESB can never please everyone. They either act too early or too late or wrongly or should not have acted at all.
«Dear KESB, you have helped us a lot. Without you, we wouldn't have found a solution so quickly. Thank you.»
Why does Charlotte Christener take on the job anyway? She smiles and points to the wall in her office. Between the drawings and photos of her children hangs an inconspicuous letter, just a few sentences: «Dear KESB, you have helped us a lot. Without you, we wouldn't have found a solution so quickly. Thank you.»
All cases and persons have been altered by the author so that they are not recognisable.
What is the KESB?
On 1 January 2013, the professional child and adult protection authority replaced the guardianship authorities, where lay people decided the fate of mentally ill and disabled people and children whose parents were unable to care for them. Interdisciplinary teams of lawyers, psychologists, educationalists and social workers are now responsible for over 100 official tasks relating to child and adult protection law. People in need of protection receive a guardianship that is individually tailored to them.
This leads to more complex procedures. This, as well as the costs that the KESB imposes on the municipalities, has led to massive criticism in some cases.
