The majority of children at crisis centers are the children of immigrants

Oslo children crisis centers.Photo: Bjørn Sigurdsøn / Scanpix

Nearly six out of ten, 59 percent, of all children who have had to seek emergency help at a children’s shelter are the children of immigrants.

A total of  1,507 children took refuge in one of Norway’s children shelters from a violent parent  in 2014. More than half of those children were less than six years old,  ABC News reports.
59 per cent of all children who sheltered in the crisis centers, have immigrant parents, a group that represents 16.3 percent of the population. This group is quite a bit younger than the Norwegian population average, which may partly explain the overrepresentation.
The figures are from a report by the Children, Youth and Family Affairs (Bufdir) that ABC News has disclosed. In 2014, it introduced forms especially for children in order to be better able to follow this group.
– We’re not surprised. The proportion of users with minority backgrounds have been stable for several years, section chief Tove Bruusgaard in Bufdir says.
The proportion of immigrants who take refuge at the crisis centers are generally high. 62 percent of all who shelter in the children’s shelters, are immigrants, and in Oslo the percentage is assumed to be even higher

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today