Child Protection Office: A Crisis Requiring Review
The widespread engagement with the previous article published by the Child Protection Office under the Ministry of Health revealed that the issue is not about an individual case or an isolated incident. Numerous calls, messages, and comments were received from fathers and families who had experienced similar situations over the years, necessitating that relevant authorities pause and study the matter seriously and transparently.
The response went beyond endorsing the article’s content; it included multiple narratives, experiences, and complaints. Some complainants expressed hesitation to speak publicly, fearing repercussions for their legal cases, their relationships with their children, or due to a prior belief that what they endured was an isolated incident unlikely to affect others.
However, the multiplicity of these incidents raises an important question: Does the Office need to correct certain procedures, or does the situation warrant a comprehensive review of its operations, jurisdiction, and oversight mechanisms? The testimonies received have repeatedly highlighted objections to the professionalism and neutrality of some reports, and to the potential for these reports to exacerbate family disputes when they become influential documents in enforcing visitation rights, custody cases, and father-child relationships.
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The Child Protection Office is not a routine administrative body, as its reports can have profound effects on a child and an entire family, and may be used in court or by enforcement agencies. Therefore, these reports should not exist without an independent mechanism to review them, verify the integrity of their preparation procedures, and assess the scientific and professional foundations upon which they are built.
Repeated complaints indicate that some custodial parents use the child as a tool in family conflicts by indoctrinating or influencing them, damaging their relationship with their father, and encouraging a negative stance toward him. These parents then convey the child’s statements to the Office, which may form the basis of a report leading to reduced visitation rights or obstructed enforcement, without a thorough examination of the circumstances under which these statements were made.
In such cases, the Office may, intentionally or unintentionally, become an additional instrument in the litigation if its staff lack the expertise to detect the influence exerted on the child and to distinguish between the child’s genuine will and views that may have been instilled through indoctrination or prolonged family conflict. Treating a child’s statements as complete truths without studying their environment can lead to highly dangerous outcomes.
Consequently, there is a pressing need to establish a clear pathway for objecting to reports and having them re-evaluated by an independent, specialized committee, particularly when they impact the enforcement of court orders or a parent-child relationship. This should be accompanied by subjecting the Office’s work to judicial supervision and effective legal oversight, as well as coordination with the Public Prosecution and the Ministry of Interior, each within their respective jurisdictions.
A report that influences the enforcement of judgments and the future of the relationship between a child and their parents is no less sensitive than the work of expert panels subject to judicial oversight and professional review. Therefore, an independent entity should be tasked with systematically examining the methodology and evidence of such reports, as well as the jurisdictional limits of those who prepared them, to prevent the Office from becoming a quasi-absolute authority in family disputes.
This also necessitates restructuring the Office, reviewing the qualifications and experience of its staff, and implementing specialized training and periodic evaluations. Furthermore, job rotation should be enforced to prevent employees from remaining in the same positions for extended periods, which could open the door to forming relationships with lawyers or parties who benefit from the Office’s reports.
Additionally, the scope of activities undertaken by some staff members outside their core mandate—such as visiting schools and commercial complexes—should be reviewed. These tasks should ideally be handled by the Supreme Council for Family Affairs.
The widespread public engagement necessitates opening this file with transparency, reviewing reports from previous years, and publishing statistics on cases, complaints, and recommendations, as well as their impact on custody and guardianship arrangements. If the procedures are sound, the review will confirm this; if systemic errors or overreach are found, identifying and correcting them constitutes the true protection of the child and the family. An entity that can influence the relationship between a father and his children through a single report must not operate without oversight commensurate with the magnitude of this power. Moreover, child protection should not become a means of depriving a child of one parent or exacerbating family fragmentation.
