Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Belgium, Case files of children in care left in abandoned building.

Case files of children in care left in abandoned building

Summary
Hundreds of files containing personal information about children in care have been found strewn by vandals inside an abandoned children’s home in Limburg

Taken by tribunal

Hundreds of case files containing personal information on children who were placed in the former children’s home Den Heuvel in Leopoldsburg in Limburg have been found abandoned, strewn by vandals inside the dining room of the establishment, which is now abandoned.
“This cannot be permitted,” said a spokesperson for the youth tribunal, which was responsible for committing children to the centre. The children attended a boarding school attached to Den Heuvel and lodged in the centre at weekends. “We will be informing the prosecutor,” he said.

Among the papers are sensitive reports, including names and photographs of children. On other pages are personal and private information about children and communications between staff at the centre and at the schools attached to the service.

“These are very old working documents containing confidential information,” said Sarina Simenon, of the community education network GO. “Any files that are important today were taken when the centre moved to Lommel, and recent case files have been archived. The files in question are older, and it was still to be decided whether they should be archived as well, or else professionally destroyed.”

The fate of the building is to be decided in September, she said. “We wanted to make the building inaccessible, but that didn’t work out, and we’ve had a visit from vandals.

The important thing now is that the documents have been taken by the tribunal, and therefore they’re safe and no longer likely to fall into the wrong hands.”

Photo courtesy De Standaard

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/current-affairs/case-files-children-care-left-abandoned-building-0

 

No comments:

Post a Comment