Rättssäkerhet inom statlig tillsynsverksamhet -framväxt och tillsyn av HVB-hem

Sammanfattning: Summary Children and adolescents can due to various reasons be placed in rehabilitation- or juvenile foster care, so called HVB-hem, by the state. These institutions are many times managed by private corporations. Rehabilitation- or juvenile foster care can become a reality for a child or adolescent if it is harming itself intentionally or is exposed to severe problems in their domestic environment. The objective of placing juveniles in HVB-hem is thus to re-assimilate these young individuals into the society. In order for these children and adolescents to become adapted to ordinary society, assorted types of treatment are required. These treatments are thus put under governmental supervision. The National Board of Health and Welfare is responsible for this supervision today. The task of supervising these treatments will however, as of June 1, 2013, be devolved to a newly established governmental institution, Health and Social Care Inspectorate (IVO). The purpose of this thesis is to investigate, the supervision of “HVB-hem” in Sweden regarding children and adolescents and it will be conducted from a rule of law perspective. The thesis will consequently investigate whether supervision of the supervising entity is required? Is the supervising institution conducting the tasks which it is obligated to perform? Supervision is to be considered as an important monitoring- and governing instrument for the state since it enables the government to investigate whether democratically made decisions, are carried out in accordance with the governments intentions. The thesis provides a historical depiction of how the supervising operations in Sweden has evolved since the 1924 reform (Childcare Act) was ratified, to the present, where it has been decided to hand over the supervising responsibility to IVO. The thesis does moreover put foci on supervision developments during the 21st century, due to the fact that major developments within the field of study do occur presently. The 2010 regulatory supervision reform contributed to significant improvements in terms of supervising the treatments. The reform meant that, The National Board of Health and Welfare was awarded full responsibility of the operations and the results where almost immediate, since supervision enforcements became homogenous on a national level. Prior to the 2010 reform, had the county administrative boards and other social service institutions been in charge of supervising the operations. The outcome of these supervision activities had thus been very diverse and arbitrary. An important reason to why the frequency of monitoring operations is high is anchored in the fact that as of January 1, 2010, in conjunction with the introduction of the supervision reform, a decree was amended to SoF 3 kap 19 §. This decree made two annual supervision visits mandatory. The thesis is moreover complemented with data derived from interviews, which were conducted by the author, at The National Board of Health and Welfare. The data will thus serve to provide the thesis with knowledge of how the supervision operations can be improved further. The question of whether the supervising institutions also should be supervised has been addressed in the thesis. This is a complex question where no obvious and direct answer can be given, as it is dependent on how one should approach it. One angle of incidence could be to rather answer the following question; if the supervision entity does not fulfil SoF 3 kap 19 §, could this lead to misconduct in duty, according to BrB 20 kap 1 §? The legal position does appear to be ambiguous since it cannot explicitly be determined who is to be held accountable if a supervising visit not is conducted, is it the inspector or the unit manager?