43 Bente Mundt Head of Division, Children’s Division ‘I just don’t know what to do’, a 17-year-old girl wrote to the Ombudsman’s Children’s Division. For a month and a half, the girl had tried to get in touch with her caseworker. She had made many phone calls and also sent several emails. Her contact person had tried as well. All of it in vain. It was easy to understand why the girl was worried. She had previously been placed in care and she was now living in a single room and had a contact person for support. She was about to turn 18, and what was going to happen then? Would she still be able to get help? Would so-called aftercare measures be a possibility? This was what she wanted to discuss with her caseworker, and obviously, it was urgent. She preferred making her own decision but she needed guidance. Another girl lodged a complaint right after she had moved out of an accommodation facility where she had been placed for 18 months. ‘I don’t want anybody else going through what I have experienced’, she wrote. She wrote that she had been subjected to coercion on numerous occasions and had been shocked to find out – in connection with moving to a new accommodation facility – that only five of these incidents had been reported. She believed that she had been subjected to many more incidents. These are two examples of complaints from children and young people lodged with the Ombudsman’s Children’s Division. Since the opening of the Children’s Division on 1 November 2012 and until the end of 2013, we have opened 62 cases following complaints lodged by children and young people themselves. This is approximately 10 per cent of the total number of complaints received by the Children’s Division in this period of time. We have noted that we have received considerably more complaints from girls than from boys.

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