Denmark’s six largest municipalities have written a joint letter to Justice Minister Nicolaj Wammen, warning that the National Police freeze on child certificates has left hundreds of positions unfilled.
The letter comes from Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg, Odense, Esbjerg and Randers. DR reported on the appeal on September 17.
In the letter, the municipalities state that the missing certificates prevent them from carrying out statutory tasks. They also say they cannot maintain normal operations in the area of children and young people.
In Aarhus Municipality alone, 400 planned hires have been put on hold. Thomas Medom of SF, the city’s alderman for children and young people, told DR that the problem grows worse by the day.
The cause is an error in the Danish criminal register, the Kriminalregisteret. According to DR’s earlier reporting, information relevant to child certificates and weapons permits was deleted from the register.
Without the certificates, municipalities are short of staff in nurseries, kindergartens, residential care facilities and swimming pools. Per Medom, permanent employees and regular substitutes are covering for one another.
He said staff are losing vacation days and working longer hours as a result. He added that children are encountering more stressed employees, and that service quality in the municipalities has fallen.
Municipalities ask for a temporary fix
The municipalities had previously been told that the National Police would present a solution within 10 days. According to DR, 14 days have now passed without one.
Medom said that if the situation continues, it will become impossible to maintain current operations. The six municipalities are therefore asking for an interim arrangement while the register is reviewed.
One option they raise is manual case processing of the certificate applications. Another is permission to hire the applicants on the condition that they never work alone, with background information obtained afterwards.
In a written response to DR, the National Police said it continues to work at full capacity reviewing offense codes for possible deletion errors. It stated that it is aware the register’s information matters to many people, authorities and organizations.
The force added that it expects to give a fuller status update once the work to uncover and fix the error is finished. DR noted that the written answer arrived after the article was first published and was added as a correction.
The halt on child certificates remains in place while the review continues. Wammen, of the Social Democrats, is the minister the six municipalities have addressed directly in the letter.
