Every year, the Ombudsman’s Children’s Division carries out monitoring visits to some of the institutions and facilities where vulnerable children and young people reside and stay. This could be departments of child and adolescent psychiatry, secure residential institutions or private accommodation facilities for children and young people.
The children’s and the young people’s rights are in focus when the Children’s Division conducts visits. It is also an important purpose of the monitoring visits to ensure that the children and the young people are doing well in the institutions and that they have good and safe relationships with the adults who work there.
One of the main elements of the Children’s Division’s visits is therefore the talks with the children and young people living in the institutions and facilities.
In the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Annual Report, which has just been published in English, one of the articles is about how the Children’s Division conducts interviews with vulnerable children and young people in connection with monitoring visits. Including particularly how to build an informal and safe setting for a talk with a child or young person you have not met before.
Several thousand clicks on the Guide for Authorities
The Annual Report also contains an article about the Ombudsman’s Guide for Authorities. It is a collection of brief guides – so-called overviews – which help authorities with answers to administrative law questions that may arise in everyday practice. Questions concerning, for instance, duty to take notes, consultation of parties and access to files. There are several thousand clicks on the Guide for Authorities every month.
The Annual Report also contains mentions of a number of the statements the Ombudsman has given in 2024.
It appears from the Annual Report that the Ombudsman last year opened 6,200 cases, which is the highest number in the history of the Ombudsman Office.
Read the Annual Report.
Further details:
Director of International Relations, Klavs Kinnerup Hede, kkh@ombudsmanden.dk