There have been cases where children were temporarily moved from their homes for, among other reasons, being overweight.
Nearly a quarter of nine-year-old children in the greater Reykjavík area are overweight, and the number of overweight children across the country is growing. The matter has reached a level of seriousness that it has been of concern to the Government Agency for Child Protection (BVS) for some time now.
Vísir now reports that there have been some cases where the weight of a child was among the reasons why he or she was temporarily moved from their homes for the sake of their own protection.
While never being the sole reason for protective services to get involved, says Halldóra Gunnarsdóttir, the managing director of BVS, that there have been up to five cases reported in the past year where among the areas of concern for protective services about a particular child has been the child’s weight.
Halldóra emphasises, though, that often times the parents are also struggling with weight issues, and that parents who are unable to feed their children properly are not punished, but rather helped.
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