Lena Hellblom Sjögren, PhD, Licensed psychologist, 2017-12-18

There is a story, without any specific origin that I know of:

An old Indian sat with his little grandson,

he told the child:

• Within us all there are two wolfs fighting.
• One is called love.
• The other is called fear.

The grandson asked very eagerly:

• Who wins?

The grandfather answered:

• The one we feed.

In Sweden we have a system where parents seeking support and help with their children from the social services when doing that can have their children taken into forced custody. This feeds fear – not love.

Can anyone trust  the authority figures, with such a power? The fact that they have no methods, no license and often lack knowledge although they are the only ones who have the power to investigate the parents and children, take decisions  and in practice enforce them, does not decrease the fear.

A system change would reduce the fear so that parents could address the social services with confidence, and both children and families could be helped. That long needed system change would be a division of HELP feeding love and COMPULSION feeding fear.