Child rights service keeps Zlabių children with family

The State Child Rights Protection and Adoption Service has decided not to remove the Zlabių family’s children and will arrange support for the family, LRT reported.

“Today, child rights specialists made a decision on the family’s need for assistance. During the reassessment of the children’s situation, the family cooperated with the child rights specialists. A decision has now been made to initiate the necessary support, which will be provided by the Ukmergė Social Services Centre,” Lina Baranauskienė, head of the Vilnius County branch of the service, said on Thursday.

She said changes were needed to protect the children’s wellbeing and safety, including in their healthcare and participation in education.

The planned assistance will focus on ensuring that each child receives timely, appropriate, consistent and continuous healthcare. It will also seek to ensure proper participation in education, address the children’s individual daily needs, and improve their living and hygiene conditions.

Baranauskienė said the first case management meeting must take place within the next two weeks. She urged the family to accept the assistance and services being offered.

“Even when a family’s and the state’s views differ, dialogue allows both sides to hear one another and focus on the most important issue: the child’s safety and wellbeing, and doing everything possible to ensure the child can grow up safely in their family,” she said.

The case became public in late July after a baby with Patau syndrome died at Kaunas Clinics. Without knowing that the baby had died, the child rights service decided to remove six children from the family, including the deceased baby.

Kaunas Clinics had informed child rights specialists about the baby’s serious condition but reported the death several days later. The service said the information about the baby’s condition was not the only reason for the decision to remove the other children from the Zlabių family, which lives in Ukmergė District. It said the decision was based on a combination of circumstances indicating a need to ensure the children’s safety.

It was later announced that the children would not be removed from their parents and that the family’s situation would be reassessed. Ukmergė District Mayor Darius Varnas told ELTA that the family refused medical services and opposed vaccinations.

The Vilnius Regional Prosecutor’s Office has launched a pre-trial investigation into suspected abuse of parental rights or duties to establish the exact circumstances of the baby’s death.