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Culture misunderstood, families separated

Leidenlawblog

2025

A Danish experiment was carried out in 1951 when 22 Inuit Greenlander children were separated from their families and sent to Denmark as an experiment in raising “”model” Greenlanders to help bridge Danish and indigenous cultures”.

Denmark has since apologised, https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/denmark-says-sorry-to-children-of-failed-experiment

More recently there has been concern that Greenlandic families have been “misjudged by a child protection system that didn’t understand them”.

For example, psychometric testing has been carried out on Greenlandic parents. While these were designed to test for parenting capability, they were carried out in Danish and disadvantaged Greenlandic parents.

Sometimes this has led to the separation of parents from children and likely has contributed to the over-representation of children born in Greenland being in the state care system.

https://www.leidenlawblog.nl/articles/culture-misunderstood-families-separated

Trauma warning: This archive contains material relating to care experience including references to abuse, neglect, sexual violence, and institutional harm.

 

Children and young people in social care, and those who have left, are often subject to stigmatisation and discrimination. Being stigmatised and discriminated against can impact negatively on mental health and wellbeing not only during the care experience but often for many years after too. The project aims to contribute towards changing community attitudes towards care experienced people as a group. See glossary HERE


Website set up with support from The Welland Trust 

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