52 ANNUAL REPORT 2014 In August 2013, we received Esbjerg Municipality’s response to our questions and approximately 5,000 pages pertaining to the cases in question. Consequently, we could begin our work of going through the files and the legislation and finally complete two major reports from the Children’s Division. THE NEGLECTED BROTHER AND SISTER On 8 July 2014, the first case report was made public. Serious criticism was expressed in the report because two socially very vulnerable children received help much too late. In the report, the Ombudsman called the municipality’s neglect ‘completely irresponsible’. Despite receiving 11 serious notifications from, among others, police, school and private citizens within a year, Esbjerg Municipality took no actual initiatives to help the brother and sister. At the time of the first notification, the children were six and eight years old. The case report shows that the municipality, among other things, failed to carry out a child’s protection examination and to work out an action plan. The municipality also failed to initiate voluntary support measures or to place the children in care, as it was supposed to do. It was not until one of the children, who in the meantime had turned nine, was brought into hospital with an alcohol level of 2.57 that an emergency placement at ‘Nordstjernen’ was arranged for the children. The Ombudsman determined that the municipality had disregarded the rules that are supposed to protect children and young people from neglect. Among other things, the Ombudsman emphasised that Esbjerg Municipality ought to have been much more insistent in regard to contacting the children’s mother who had parental custody at the time. The full case report was sent to Esbjerg Municipality’s mayor. The Ombudsman also informed the municipal council, Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, Parliament’s Social Affairs Committee, and the Ministry of Children, Gender Equality, Integration and Social Affairs about the case. A month after the case report was made public, the Ombudsman received a report from Esbjerg Municipality. The municipality accounted for the measures it had implemented with help from the Task Force of the National Social Appeals Board in order to ensure that rules and guidelines in the children’s sector are observed in future. Hereafter, the Ombudsman decided to close the case.