38 Case No. 14/02416 A father was of the opinion that there was no objectivity in a notification from a municipal family counsellor who had described him as controlling, manipulative and aggressive. The family counsellor was worried that the two small children in the family would experience problems due to their parents’ tumultuous relationship. The Ombudsman wrote to the father that he was unable to do anything about the family counsellor’s notification concerning the children: A public employee is obliged to react if he or she assesses that a child needs help. The Ombudsman also wrote to the father that he could lodge a complaint with the mayor regarding the notification’s content and form. Complaints concerning children and young people are usually processed at the Ombudsman’s Children’s Division. In 2014, the Children’s Division opened 765 complaint cases. 37 cases were opened following complaints from children and young people under 18. Case No. 14/00217 A father contacted the Employees’ Guarantee Fund (Lønmodtagernes Garantifond, LG) for guidance on how his daughter could get the wages her former employer owed her. As the father understood it, the reply was that his daughter should have the employer declared bankrupt first. However, it later turned out that the daughter could not get her money from the Fund because she had not made the claim in due time. The Ombudsman sent the case on to the Customer Ambassador of ATP, the Labour Market Supplement Fund Scheme, as a complaint about the guidance the father had received. The Customer Ambassador made the Fund have another look at the case – and as there was some doubt as to the exact nature of the guidance given by the Fund in the case, the daughter received the wages owed to her. The authorities’ case processing and case processing time was the main subject of approximately one third of the complaint cases concluded by the Ombudsman in 2014. Case No. 14/03532 A 13-year-old boy complained to the Ombudsman because his parents were invading his privacy by coming into his room without knocking, even though he had asked them not to. The Ombudsman cannot consider complaints from children about their parents. A case officer from the Ombudsman’s Children’s Division called the boy on the boy’s mobile phone and told him that the Child Helpline at the humanitarian organisation Children’s Welfare would be able to advise him on this particular problem. By far the majority of the Ombudsman’s case processing is in writing but complaints from, among others, children and young people may sometimes be resolved over the telephone. Case No. 14/04034 According to himself, a man had sent 439 e-mails to various employees and politicians at the municipality – many of them identical. The man was dissatisfied with the decisions taken by the municipality in regard to his daughter who was placed in care. The municipality spent a lot of time answering the man’s e-mails and, in consequence hereof, the municipality wrote to him that in the course of the next six months he could only communicate with a specific employee at the municipal administration whereupon the employee would go through his e-mails once a month and answer them, if there were any new issues in the matter. The Ombudsman could not criticise that the municipality had chosen to set priorities for its resources this way. He referred to a case from the Ombudsman’s Annual Report for 2010 with a similar decision. Each year the Ombudsman selects a number of cases of essential and general public importance as part of his Annual Report to Parliament regarding his activities. In 2014, 43 cases were selected. Summaries of the cases can be found on pages 117-152.