Dry rules provide quality in public administration | 31 mentioned above are designed precisely to help make a correct assessment of whether or not the return of a child placed in care is the right decision to make and that, if so, the right follow-up is carried out. Consultations with child­ren ensure, for instance, that the child can make his or her opinion known to the municipality so that the municipality can make a decision on the best possible basis. And revision of the individual action plan is intended to ensure that there is a settled and updated direction for where the focus for the individual child is to be after the return to the child’s own home. None of this seemed to have happened in the cases we took out for a random check. We therefore expressed serious criticism of the municipality and a general concern for the quality of the municipality’s processing of cases regarding returns of children and young people placed in care outside their home. Randers Municipality has subsequently given an account of how the municipality will ensure that the rules are observed in future. This is, of course, good. ‘Cold’ and ‘warm’ hands I will return to the Ry case for a moment. As I mentioned earlier, there were here a number of errors made with regard to, among other things, the duty to take notes and keep records. In this context, the authorities stated that the school had ‘identified itself as a school which (…) has had its focus on learning, teaching and a solution- and development-orientated approach to the handling of conflicts or challenges regarding the individual pupil’. This was undoubtedly true. And the school seemed to have prioritised such a focus higher than, for instance, rules on the duty to take notes and keep records. I wonder if that does not apply to other schools as well. Most people who choose to work at a school are probably more passionate about the daily efforts on behalf of the pupils than about the duty to take notes and keep records. But in many cases – for instance in the Ry case – this is actually a false contradiction. The Ry case is an example that correct observance of, among other things, the rules on the duty to take notes and keep records can be very important precisely in order to underpin ‘a solutionand development-orientated approach to the handling of conflicts or challenges regarding the individual pupil’. Because how do you manage that approach if you do not have, for instance, an overview of the case? How do you then use those ‘warm hands’ in the right way? I started this article by saying that I am not going to meddle in the discussion of whether or not there are generally too heavy demands for documentation etc. in the public sector. But I have tried to show that you should not always disparage rules which at first glance may seem formalistic and bureaucratic. They may mean more than you would think at first glance.