Licence Loss: Revocations of Residential Care Licences in Four Nordic Countries

With a placement in residential care, society takes over the overall responsibility for a child’s daily care, wellbeing, and development, and how public authorities respond to poor care quality is of crucial importance. To guarantee care quality and to minimise risks, welfare states increasingly develop different mechanisms and systems to supervise out-of-home care. In this article, we analyse how central Inspectorates in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden deal with what can be conceived as the last supervisory measure, namely revocation of licences. The aim is to describe and analyse how frequently and why national Inspectorates
in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden withdraw residential care licences. The data is based on an analysis of all available revocation decisions in the countries between the years
2017-2021. The findings reveal that between 2017 and 2021, there were 53 instances of
licence suspensions or revocations across the four countries, albeit with variations among the
nations. Furthermore, the study shows that RCUs generally had a documented history of interactions with inspectorates and revocation decisions were often attributed to several reasons, with safety, staff-related concerns, and documentation deficiencies being the primary factors. The findings are discussed based on concepts and theory on regulation and
supervision.