"Right when she came out, I started counting the minutes," Keira, 39, recalls. "I kept looking at the clock to see how long we had." When the moment came for Zammi to be taken from her arms, Keira says she sobbed uncontrollably, whispering "sorry" to her baby. "It felt like a part of my soul died." Now Keira is one of many Greenlandic families living on the Danish mainland who are fighting to get their children returned to them after they were removed by social services. In such cases, babies and children were taken away after parental competency tests - known in Denmark as FKUs - were used to help assess whether they were fit to be parents. In May this year the Danish government banned the use of these tests on Greenlandic families after decades of criticism, although they continue to be used on other families in Denmark. The assessments, which usually take months to complete, are used in complex welfare cases where authorities believe children are at risk of neglect or harm.

They include interviews with parents and children, a range of cognitive tasks, such as recalling a sequence of numbers backwards, general knowledge quizzes, and personality and emotional testing.

Defenders of the tests say they offer a more objective method of assessment than the potentially anecdotal and subjective evidence of social workers and other experts.

But critics say they cannot meaningfully predict whether someone will make a good parent.

Opponents have also long argued that they are designed around Danish cultural norms and point out they are administered in Danish, rather than Kalaallisut, the mother tongue of most Greenlanders.

This can lead to misunderstandings, they say.

Greenlanders are Danish citizens, enabling them to live and work on the mainland.

Thousands live in Denmark, drawn by its employment opportunities, education and healthcare, among other reasons.

Greenlandic parents in Denmark are 5.6 times more likely to have children taken into care than Danish parents, according to the Danish Centre for Social Research, a government-funded research institute.

In May, the government said it hoped in due course to review around 300 cases – including ones involving FKU tests – in which Greenlandic children were forcibly removed from their families.

But as of October, the BBC found that just 10 cases where parenting tests were used had been reviewed by the government - and no Greenlandic children had been returned as a result.

Keira's assessment in 2024, carried out when she was pregnant, concluded that she did not have "sufficient parental competencies to care for the newborn independently".

Keira says the questions she was asked included: "Who is Mother Teresa?" and "How long does it take for the sun's rays to reach the Earth?"

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