Coercion still an issue in Swiss welfare system, report finds
The rights of people in vulnerable situations are still sometimes disregarded within the Swiss welfare system, a national research programme has found.
While there have been developments in child and adult protection measures in recent decades, these have only been partially implemented in practice, according to the final report of the Swiss National Science Foundation’s (SNSF) ‘Welfare and Coercion’ National Research Programme (NRP 76), published on Thursday.
The project concluded that there was still a lot of work to be done, particularly around the participation of those affected. It said that legitimised measures were still associated with coercion in certain situations and cantonal disparities also led to legal inequalities.
+ Read more: forced labour in post-war Switzerland
The Swiss social welfare system still bears the legacy of compulsory measures and forced placements which affected hundreds of thousands in the 20th century, the SNSF said in a press release.
However, the report, in which some 150 researchers participated, also found that improvements had been made in many areas, particularly when it came to best interests of children involved.
Adapted from German by DeepL/kp,dos
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
More
Will Switzerland finally do away with imputed rental-value tax on homeowners?
More
A Geneva-based global health foundation came close to ‘collapse’. Where were regulators?
More
A spark of hope for Swiss descendants without a Swiss passport
More
When a US bomber crashed into Max Huber’s Zurich castle
More
Is Switzerland repeating England’s housing mistakes?
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.