Tillgodoses principen om barnets bästa när barnet flyttar hem till sina biologiska föräldrar efter upphörande av vård med stöd av LVU? …eller är det föräldrarnas bästa som tillgodoses?

Article 3 in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says that what’s considered to be the best interests of the child must be decisive in all decisions concerning children. The Convention became Swedish law on 1 January 2020, but has been part of Swedish law for longer than that. Sweden ratified the Children's Convention in 1990 and since then, the principle has been gradually incorporated into Swedish legislation. The principle is, among other things, an important part of LVU, the law that gives the social services the right to take care of children in vulnerable positions. The thesis addresses the situations where care with the support of LVU has been decided to cease. On the one hand, the basic idea with LVU is that care should be terminated when the situation that led to the treatment has ceased. On the other hand, the first section of LVU states that what is considered best for the child must be decisive in all decisions. The purpose of the thesis has been to investigate whether the legislation satisfies the principle of the best interests of the child in practice when children are to move to their biological parents. The first part of the thesis consists of an examination of what the principle of the child's best is and what significance it has for Swedish law. There is no clear definition of the principle, but according to guidelines it should be interpreted based on the child's specific situation and needs. The thesis states that an assessment becomes relatively arbitrary and varies from case to case, as there is no common interpretation template. Thereafter, the process that the social service follows when a child is to move home to their biological parents is clarified. Since the thesis has focused solely on the cases where children have been taken care of because of unsustainable home conditions, the social service's task is to investigate how the home conditions look after the child's care and to estimate whether the child's needs now can be met by the biological parents. Unlike when the social service performs a check on a potential family home, there are no generally set requirements regarding the biological family. LVU merely establishes the requirement that the conditions for care no longer exist. Criticism of the legislation is stated in the essay because the principle of the best interests of the child cannot be considered in connection with children to move home to their biological parents.