As the system grows, the overview shrinks and accountability disappears.
The system meant to safeguard children's welfare in Iceland is larger and more complex than most people realise. It has been built in parts, each part under its own laws, and no part sees the whole. This page sets out the situation as it stands: what the system is, what has been decided, what has been delivered, and where children fall between systems.
A note: HÆ's data-gathering has not yet begun, and the system that will manage it is under construction. This page is the situation as it appears today, compiled from public sources and published with that caveat. We cite a source for every claim, and where sources are uncertain or conflicting we flag it rather than fill in the gaps.
The system no one sees as a whole.
The system meant to safeguard children's welfare reaches from international commitments down to the child, and many parties take part in it. Iceland's Government Offices house eleven ministries, four to five of them with core tasks concerning children. Under them work at least nineteen state agencies and authorities that deliver and oversee. Day-to-day services then sit with more than sixty municipalities, over two hundred preschools, and just over two hundred compulsory and upper-secondary schools, along with all the professionals those services involve. Over it all lies the oversight of seven independent authorities, and the data about children arises in many separate places.
Each unit works under its own laws and answers for its own part. At least eighteen key acts govern children's affairs, from the Children Act and the Child Protection Act to the child-wellbeing legislation, and a search for the keyword "barn" (child) in the regulations database returns more than two hundred results. Nowhere is the whole brought together in one place and examined in context. The figures above are drawn from public sources: Alþingi, the Government Offices, island.is, Registers Iceland (7 January 2026), the Association of Local Authorities, and Statistics Iceland.
One child, many systems.
A child's case does not respect the boundaries between systems. A child with complex needs can have a case open at the same time in healthcare, social services, and school, where each system works under its own laws and handles its own part. No single body holds the case as a whole.
Where one system's responsibility ends and another's begins, gaps can form, and it is often unclear who is responsible for what. That is where children risk falling between systems. The data is marked by the same thing: it exists, but in fragments. Each body records its own data, in its own format and by its own definitions, and nowhere is the whole brought together in one place and examined in context.
Source: the child-wellbeing legislation, Act No. 86/2021, enacted to reduce barriers between systems, and the National Audit Office's review (10 June 2026). We analyse the system, not individual cases.
Much is decided. Little is delivered.
The common thread in this field over recent years is clear: the system produces laws, plans, proposals, and agreements, but the services themselves arrive late or not at all. Here is a selected timeline from 2018 to 2026, distinguishing what was decided or promised from what was delivered.
Spring 2018: a declaration of intent on changes for children
Decided and promised. Five ministers and the Association of Local Authorities signed a declaration of intent on 7 September 2018 to remove barriers between systems, and a Government steering group was appointed. That is where the work that became the child-wellbeing legislation began. Source: parliamentary document 440/151 (althingi.is) and farsaeldbarna.is.
9 October 2019: the state declares waiting lists eliminated
Promised and declared. The Minister of Social Affairs and Children introduced a new MST team and declared that waiting lists for children's services had been eliminated. A few years later, in 2024 to 2026, the wait was back in the headlines. Source: the ministry's news item "Aukin þjónusta við börn: nýtt MST teymi og biðlistum útrýmt", 9 October 2019 (stjornarradid.is).
2020 to 2021: the wait for an ADHD diagnosis grows longer
Documented in an answer in Alþingi. The number of children on the waiting list for an ADHD diagnosis at the Developmental and Behavioural Assessment Centre (Þroska- og hegðunarstöð) rose from 351 at the end of 2020 to 432 on 1 October 2021. Source: an answer to a parliamentary question, document 914/153 (althingi.is).
11 June 2021: the child-wellbeing legislation is passed
Delivered in law. Alþingi unanimously passed Act No. 86/2021 on the integration of services in the interest of children's prosperity, along with Act No. 87/2021 on the National Agency for Children and Families and Act No. 88/2021 on the Quality and Oversight Authority for Welfare. The acts took effect on 1 January 2022. Source: althingi.is (Act No. 86/2021).
December 2021: the Ombudsman for Children publishes the first waiting figures
A review. The Ombudsman for Children compiled and published, for the first time, overall figures on children's waits for services: 738 children were waiting at the Mental Health Centre and the Developmental and Behavioural Assessment Centre, and 326 at the State Diagnostic and Counselling Centre. The wait is not measured centrally, so the Ombudsman compiled it independently. Source: the Ombudsman for Children, barn.is (December 2021).
1 January 2022: new agencies take over
Delivered. The Government Agency for Child Protection (Barnaverndarstofa) was wound up, and the National Agency for Children and Families and the Quality and Oversight Authority for Welfare began operating. The framework was in place. Source: the Government Offices (21 January 2022).
August 2023: proposals on children with complex needs
Decided but not delivered. A steering group delivered a report with thirteen to fourteen proposed services and a detailed cost estimate. Two years later, none of the services had been implemented: "Yet not one of them has seen the light of day" (mbl.is, 21 June 2025). Source: the Government Offices (30 August 2023).
August 2023: 1,662 children waiting for mental-health services
A review. At the same time as the proposals awaited implementation, 1,662 children were waiting for the services of the children's Mental Health Centre, 1,623 of them for longer than three months. Source: a compilation by the Ombudsman for Children, barn.is (August 2023).
May 2024: many municipalities have not begun implementation
Confirmed in a status report. According to the minister's status report on the implementation of the child-wellbeing legislation, twelve of 64 municipalities had begun no work on implementing it. Source: status report on the implementation of the child-wellbeing legislation, 13 May 2024 (stjornarradid.is).
19 October 2024: the fire at Stuðlar
A consequence of scarcity. The state's emergency accommodation at Stuðlar was destroyed in a fire in which a seventeen-year-old boy died. For a time afterwards, children were held in emergency accommodation in prison cells at Flatahraun, an arrangement the Parliamentary Ombudsman found to breach children's rights. Source: RÚV (19 October 2024) and mbl.is (14 March 2025).
19 March 2025: an agreement between the state and municipalities
Decided and promised. The state took on the delivery and funding of specialised out-of-home services for children with complex needs, with an additional allocation of 1.7 billion krónur from 1 June 2025. Source: the Government Offices and RÚV (19 March 2025).
17 March 2026: seven new proposals on substance-abuse services
Proposals, not delivery. A prime minister's working group presented seven proposals for integrated services for children with substance-abuse problems, including an addiction-psychiatry unit for children and an integrated assessment team. The cabinet agreed to appoint a steering group to follow up. Source: the Government Offices (17 March 2026).
10 June 2026: the National Audit Office's review
Confirmed by an independent body. The National Audit Office found that the conditions were not in place to achieve the child-wellbeing legislation's main goal of integrated services without barriers, and that the preparation of the legislation had been inadequate. Source: the National Audit Office (10 June 2026).
June and July 2026: a dispute over delivery
Undelivered and disputed. The Association of Local Authorities held that the state had "unilaterally redefined and narrowed the group of children covered by the agreement" from 2025 (24 June 2026). Shortly afterwards it was reported that the state was paying for the services of only five Reykjavík children, while 57 fell outside the new definition. Source: Vísir (24 June and 3 July 2026), citing RÚV, and the Government Offices (25 June 2026).
The main pattern is confirmed: the system passes laws and makes plans, but first- and second-level services have received more attention than third-level services, where children with the most severe and complex needs require the most coordination. The child-wellbeing legislation frames cooperation but does not create new services; if the underlying service does not exist, integration alone is not enough.
The treatment homes: opened, closed, reopened.
The state runs treatment homes for children and young people under the National Agency for Children and Families. Their availability shows the instability better than almost anything else. The story is not a straight decline but a series of openings and closures.
Around 2010, three treatment homes were operating after Götusmiðjan and Árbót had closed: Laugaland, Háholt, and Lækjarbakki. The reduction then came in steps. Háholt in Skagafjörður closed on 1 July 2017 after some twenty years of operation, as no applications for placement were received and there was seen to be no basis for renewing the operating contract. Laugaland in Eyjafjörður closed on 22 January 2021.
Lækjarbakki closed in April 2024 because of mould. In the aftermath there was almost no long-term service for boys for close to two years. Over the same period new state-run services appeared: the treatment home Bjargey at Laugaland began operating on 1 June 2022, the assessment and treatment home Blönduhlíð opened in late 2024 or early 2025, and Lækjarbakki was reopened at Gunnarsholt in March 2026, formally on 8 May 2026.
Constant rebuilding of this kind points to instability in the basic service rather than lasting development. Availability swings from year to year, and meanwhile the children wait. Source: reports from RÚV, mbl.is, Vísir, and the Government Offices (2017 to 2026). On Blönduhlíð the sources disagree on the location and exact opening date; we flag that uncertainty rather than assert.
The figures behind the debate.
Official figures confirm the scale of the problem. The Government's Child Well-being Dashboard is based in large part on the 2025 Icelandic Youth Survey, put to about 13,800 children in grades 4, 6, 8, and 10. Among older students, both self-harm and anxiety measure 15 percent, and 13 percent say they have experienced sexual violence and another 13 percent domestic violence.
Reports to child protection rose from 10,213 in 2018 to 15,240 in 2023, an increase of 49 percent. Over the same period the proportion of qualified preschool teachers fell from 27.8 percent in 2018 to 23.1 percent in 2023, and Icelandic students' results in the 2022 PISA survey were below both the OECD and Nordic averages. The wait is not measured consistently across systems; the Ombudsman for Children compiled independently that 626 children were waiting for a diagnosis at the State Diagnostic and Counselling Centre in August 2024. Sources: the Child Well-being Dashboard, the National Agency for Children and Families, and compilations by the Ombudsman for Children. Unconfirmed figures are not included.
This is not our assessment alone.
The National Audit Office took the child-wellbeing legislation for an administrative review on its own initiative and published the result on 10 June 2026. The conclusion was unequivocal.
"Given the current state of the various services for children, the National Audit Office does not consider the conditions to be in place to achieve the main goal of the legislation: that children and parents who need it have access to appropriate, integrated services without barriers."
The National Audit Office, review of the implementation of the child-wellbeing legislation, 10 June 2026.
The National Audit Office made six recommendations, and they describe the problem well. They concern building an overview of children's circumstances, setting objective outcome measures, establishing a digital system for integrated services, clarifying the role of those who provide general services, strengthening service infrastructure, and reviewing substance-abuse treatment for children. In other words: the full picture, the measures, and the infrastructure are missing.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the yardstick when children's circumstances are assessed. It was incorporated into law by Act No. 19/2013, but the third optional protocol, on children's independent right of complaint to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, has been neither signed nor ratified by Iceland. And according to the Child Well-being Dashboard, only 45 percent of children know the convention that is meant to protect them. Sources: the National Audit Office (10 June 2026), Act No. 19/2013 (althingi.is), and the Child Well-being Dashboard.
Without the full picture, every step becomes a guess.
When the full picture is missing, attention follows what can be seen: a single, harrowing case that reaches the media spotlight. The nation reacts, improvements are promised, the spotlight moves on, and the underlying problem sits untouched. Without continuous data, there is no way to tell whether the case was an exception or whether the promises were kept. And so the story repeats itself, while the children who never make the news keep waiting.
It is not the fault of the people inside the system. The system was built in parts, and no part sees the whole. HÆ's contribution is to gather the existing data in one place, analyse where the system fails alongside the country's leading experts, and follow up on promises and improvements, independently of government. To bring about positive change, you first need a clear picture of reality.
Bibliography.
All data is drawn from public primary sources and compiled in July 2026. Here are the main sources the page rests on, with dates and links where applicable.
Oversight and independent reviews
- The National Audit Office, "Act on the integration of services in the interest of children's prosperity. Implementation and execution" (10 June 2026).
- The Ombudsman for Children, compilations on children's waits for services (barn.is), including new figures in August 2024.
- The Parliamentary Ombudsman, OPCAT review of the emergency accommodation of children (Stuðlar and Flatahraun), December 2024.
Laws and parliamentary documents (althingi.is)
- Act No. 86/2021 on the integration of services in the interest of children's prosperity: althingi.is/lagas/nuna/2021086.html.
- Act No. 87/2021 on the National Agency for Children and Families and Act No. 88/2021 on the Quality and Oversight Authority for Welfare.
- Act No. 19/2013 on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: althingi.is/lagas/nuna/2013019.html.
- Act No. 80/2002, the Child Protection Act, and Act No. 76/2003, the Children Act.
- Parliamentary document 440/151, the bill for the child-wellbeing legislation, and parliamentary resolution No. 28/151, "A Child-Friendly Iceland".
The Government Offices (stjornarradid.is)
- "Proposals for the arrangement of services for children with complex needs" (30 August 2023).
- "Agreement reached between the state and municipalities on services for children with complex needs" (19 March 2025).
- "Bjargey, a new treatment home in Eyjafjörður" (29 June 2022) and "The treatment home Lækjarbakki formally opened at Gunnarsholt" (8 May 2026).
- "Response to criticism of the regulation on the placement of children with complex support needs" (25 June 2026).
- Status report on the implementation of the child-wellbeing legislation (13 May 2024) and the launch of the Child Well-being Dashboard (29 April 2024).
Statistics and dashboards
- The Child Well-being Dashboard, the Government Offices, based on the 2025 Icelandic Youth Survey (accessed 5 July 2026).
- The National Agency for Children and Families, figures on reports to child protection 2018 to 2023.
- Registers Iceland, the number of municipalities 1 January 2026, and Statistics Iceland (population, preschools, schools).
- OECD, PISA 2022 (conducted in Iceland by the Directorate of Education and School Services).
Media (for context)
- RÚV, "17-year-old boy died in the fire at Stuðlar" (19 October 2024) and coverage of the agreement between the state and municipalities (19 March 2025).
- mbl.is, coverage of the steering group's proposals and the state of the treatment homes (2023 to 2026).
- Vísir, coverage of the regulation dispute between the state and municipalities (24 June and 3 July 2026), citing RÚV.