Camilla Waltersson Grönvall

Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (born 19 March 1969) is a Swedish politician for the Moderate Party and Minister for Social Services (socialtjänstminister) since 18 October 2022. She is a minister in the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs in the cabinet of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. The government assigns her social services, disability policy and the rights of the child.

The Moderate Party gives her birthplace as Kullings-Skövde parish, then in Älvsborg County. Altinget instead lists Eggvena, in Herrljunga Municipality. In the biography she supplied to the Riksdag, her parents are named as the electrician and self-employed businessman Rolf Waltersson and the clerical worker and self-employed businesswoman Mona Waltersson, née Haga. She finished the humanities programme at Alströmerskolan in Alingsås in 1989. From 1992 to 1998 she followed teacher training in Swedish and English at the then University College of Karlstad (Högskolan i Karlstad) and the University of Gothenburg; the ministerial CV states that the course was not completed. She lives in Lilla Edet, is married and has three children.

From 1990 to 2009 she worked as a teacher and principal, including at Sjuntorpskolan in Trollhättan, Fuxernaskolan in Lilla Edet and Kyrkbyskolan in Nödinge. She was district chair of the Moderate Youth in northern Älvsborg from 1993 to 1996, vice-chair of Lilla Edet’s education board from 1998 to 2002 and chair of that board from 2002 to 2010. She entered the Riksdag as a full member on 4 October 2010 and represents Västra Götaland County West. She was the Moderates’ spokesperson on education policy from 2014 to 2017 and on social policy from 2017 to 2022. Since the day she became a minister she has been on leave from the parliamentary seat.

The Social Services Act (2025:400) was issued on 22 May 2025, entered into force on 1 July 2025 and repealed the Social Services Act (2001:453). The Riksdag’s Committee on Social Affairs backed the government bill, whose stated aims include a social service that is easier to reach and works in a more preventive and knowledge-based way, a power for social boards to offer some measures without an individual needs assessment, a duty to prevent and counteract crime, and wording brought closer to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

On the government website she describes a strong social service as one of the most important tools for preventing crime. In September 2025 the union Vision rejected a government proposal for so-called intermediate coercion (mellantvång), which would let social services decide on measures without consent. The union’s chair, Veronica Magnusson, said there was no research support for forced open-care interventions and that they risked wasting resources and reducing trust in social services.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Camilla Waltersson Grönvall was born on 19 March 1969. Altinget gives her birthplace as Eggvena in Herrljunga Municipality, and a 2016 Borås Tidning profile likewise lists Eggvena in that municipality. The paper’s 2022 account of her appointment to the government described her, in the article lead, as born in Vårgårda and brought up in Eggvena.

Eggvena lies between Herrljunga and Vårgårda in the province of Västergötland. That part of western Sweden was in Älvsborg County until 1998, when the county administrative boards of Älvsborg, Göteborg och Bohus and Skaraborg were merged and Västra Götaland County was formed.

She grew up on a small farm in Eggvena. In a January 2024 interview she said that her father ran both the farm and an electrical firm of his own, and that the hard work had formed her: one works and earns one’s keep. The biographical note she supplied to the Riksdag publication Fakta om folkvalda names her parents as the electrician and self-employed businessman Rolf Waltersson and the office clerk and self-employed businesswoman Mona Waltersson, née Haga.

Schooling and teacher training

She has said that she liked languages at school and liked to travel, and that besides English she spoke fluent German. She left upper secondary school in 1989. The Riksdag biography specifies the humanities line (humanistisk linje), with 1989 as the final year. The government’s curriculum vitae records a gymnasieexamen from Alströmerskolan in Alingsås that year and does not name the line.

In the 2024 interview she placed the start of her political engagement in her early teens and in dissatisfaction with school. She said she had been very upset that the grading scale then in use, from 1 to 5, did not measure knowledge but was steered by how pupils across the country performed in percentage terms, and that schools could not meet pupils according to their needs and circumstances. She said she was recruited into the youth organisation of the Moderate Party, where she felt she could raise questions and look for solutions together with others, and that party affiliation was not then what mattered most to her.

From 1992 to 1998 she followed a teacher-training course in Swedish and English at Högskolan i Karlstad and the University of Gothenburg. The government CV records that course as not completed. The Riksdag biography, based on information she submitted, instead lists compulsory-school teacher training (grundskollärarutbildning) in Karlstad and Gothenburg for 1993–1999 and does not say that the studies were unfinished. The 2024 interview describes the studies as training to teach languages in school years 7–9. She said there that she trained as a teacher, stood in as a principal for a year, and then wanted to return to the classroom; the Riksdag gives her professional title as teacher.

Teaching career

Schools and posts

The curriculum vitae published by the Swedish government lists Camilla Waltersson Grönvall as principal and teacher at various schools from 1990 to 2009, including Sjuntorpskolan in Trollhättan, Fuxernaskolan in Lilla Edet and Kyrkbyskolan in Nödinge. The same CV records teacher training in Swedish and English at Högskolan i Karlstad and the University of Gothenburg from 1992 to 1998, and states that the programme was not completed.

A 2016 Borås Tidning profile reported that her first teaching job was at Molla skola, in Herrljunga Municipality, and that she later worked at Sjuntorps skola both as a language teacher and as principal. When she visited the city as minister in February 2023, Trollhättan Municipality wrote that she had worked for many years as both teacher and principal at Sjuntorpsskolan. In a January 2024 interview she said she had trained as a teacher and had substituted as principal for a year, then returned to the classroom because that was where her engagement with the pupils lay; the article also said she remained on leave from Sjuntorpskolan. The government CV does not date the separate schools or distinguish that one-year substitute post from the 1990–2009 heading. In February 2026 Socionomen described her as a teacher by background who had spent many years with children in school years 4–6 and 7–9.

The biography she supplied to the Riksdag publication Fakta om folkvalda gives her title as teacher and lists employment by Trollhättan Municipality from 1998 with no end year. It records compulsory-school teacher training in Karlstad and Gothenburg for 1993–1999 and does not note that the government CV treats the training as unfinished.

From the classroom to full-time politics

The government CV closes the school employment in 2009 and lists membership of the Riksdag, for the Moderate Party, from 2010. Over the same years she chaired the education board in Lilla Edet, from 2002 to 2010; that was a political assignment alongside the school posts, not part of the teaching work.

In the 2016 interview she said she usually described the change by saying that she had not stopped being a teacher but had started as a member of parliament. The paper’s fact box listed her occupation as a teacher on leave (tjänstledig lärare) and as a Riksdag member for northern Västra Götaland County. That account fits the open-ended Trollhättan employment in the Riksdag biography, and the later statement that she remained on leave from Sjuntorpskolan, rather than a resignation from the municipal post when she entered parliament. In the 2024 interview she said she had left the classroom in order to bring about change. Speaking to Socionomen in 2026, she described the school years as, in one sense, social work—meeting parents who did not take their responsibility, and a school health service that did not always meet the need—and said a teacher could matter greatly for pupils in difficulty.

Municipal politics

Moderate Youth and the council

Waltersson Grönvall has dated her party involvement to the age of 14, when she joined the Moderate Youth League (Moderata ungdomsförbundet). In an interview for the Stockholm Moderates' podcast she said she had been angry that the relative 1–5 grading scale then in use did not measure what pupils knew, and that school policy was her focus from the start. A profile in Dagens Samhälle likewise states that she joined the youth league at 14. She was district chair of the league in Norra Älvsborg from 1993 to 1996.

In Lilla Edet the assignments in the biography she supplied to the Riksdag for Fakta om folkvalda begin in the same period. That account lists her as an alternate and a member of the social services committee from 1993 to 1998, a municipal councillor from 1995, an alternate on the municipal executive board from 1996 to 1998, and a full member of the executive board from 1998 to 2010.

She kept the council seat after entering parliament in 2010. Alekuriren reported that she had headed the Moderate Party council list and stood third on the Riksdag list, and that a third Moderate constituency seat was what elected her. The Election Authority records the first-placed Moderate in Lilla Edet that year — a 41-year-old woman, her age on election day — as personally elected. In the later anonymised personal-vote table, the only Moderate over that threshold had 210 votes, 17.30 percent of the party's municipal vote. The party held five of 31 seats, as in 2006.

Later files redact names, but the top of the list still matches her. In 2014 first place was a 45-year-old woman described as a teacher in Lilla Edet, and that list place was marked personally elected; the only Moderate over the threshold had 237 votes, 19.87 percent, and the party again took five seats. In 2018 first place was a 49-year-old woman described as a Riksdag member and teacher in Lilla Edet. In 2022 she was named first on the Moderate municipal list and recorded as personally elected.

She attended the new council on 24 October 2022. A resignation dated 18 June 2023 reached the council on 20 June; on 21 June it was granted and sent to the County Administrative Board for a new count. The Election Authority gives 21 June 2023 as her departure and Anna Chorell as her successor. In July 2024 she told Alekuriren she had wanted to stay on the council, but that she spent more days in Stockholm as a minister than she had as a member of parliament.

Education board and regional assignments

The education board was the committee post that ran through the same local years. The Riksdag biography lists her as a member in 1997–1998, vice chair from 1998 to 2002 and chair from 2002 to 2010, and the government CV gives the same vice-chair and chair periods. The CV places those years beside her employment as a teacher and principal, which it dates from 1990 to 2009.

She was also a member of the Gothenburg region's education group (Göteborgsregionens utbildningsgrupp). The government CV puts that membership in 1998–2002 and again in 2006–2010. The Riksdag biography instead gives 1994–1998 and 2006–2010. Both accounts leave 2002–2006, the first half of her chairmanship of the local education board, blank, and they do not agree on which years before 2002 she sat in the regional group. The Riksdag biography further lists membership of the education preparatory body (utbildningsberedning) of what was then Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting from 2002 to 2010, and service as an alternate on the police board (polisstyrelsen) for Västra Götaland County from 2006 to 2010. Neither of those two assignments appears on the government CV.

Riksdag career

Elections and constituency

Waltersson Grönvall entered the Riksdag on 4 October 2010 as an ordinary member for the Moderate Party, and the Riksdag recorded her as on leave from the seat from 18 October 2022. In 2010 she stood in Västra Götaland County North (Västra Götalands läns norra), then including Lilla Edet, where the Moderates took three seats, one more than in 2006. She had 820 personal votes, 1.76 percent of the party's constituency vote, below the 8 percent needed to override the list, while Mikael Cederbratt (1,950 votes) and Henrik Ripa (1,588) were the other two seated on list order.

Before the 2014 election she won both the members' and the open Moderate primary in Norra Älvsborg for the Riksdag list, with 188 and 92 votes, ahead of Cederbratt and Ripa. She was returned again and stayed an ordinary member through the following terms. A boundary change before 2018 placed Lilla Edet in Västra Götaland County West (Västra Götalands läns västra), the constituency shown for her on the Riksdag roll. For 2022 the party's nominating meeting put her first on the Moderate Riksdag ballot for that constituency.

Education policy

She was the Moderates' education-policy spokesperson from 2014 to 2017.

In January 2015 she called marks from year 4 part of a wider package, said Sweden graded unusually late, and linked weak monitoring of learning to the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment. She criticised Education Minister Gustav Fridolin, of the Green Party, for not preparing a reform she said the Riksdag had decided, and noted that the Alliance budget had reserved 10 million kronor for the preparation. Against union and research criticism she said marks in year 6 had also been opposed, and that countries with earlier marks often had better knowledge results. She wanted the preschool class to become year 1, a change she said could pass with Sweden Democrat votes, preferred earmarked förstelärare pay to taxing labour for general teacher rises, and said a municipal veto on new independent schools had to go.

Social-policy spokesperson

From 2017 to 2022 she was the party's social-policy spokesperson. An alternate on the Committee on Health and Welfare (socialutskottet) from October 2014 to December 2015, she was a full member from 13 October 2017 to 26 September 2022, and again from 4 to 18 October 2022.

Motion 2019/20:2928, "En bättre start i livet", sought wider preschool rights, compulsory summer school, follow-up of placed children's results, reviews of compulsory care and of the Care of Young Persons Act (lagen med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av unga), more adoptions and custody transfers, and more placements of young offenders under that act. The chamber rejected the preschool, summer-school, school-results and young-offender points, partly backed both reviews in report 2020/21:SoU38, and backed the adoption and custody-transfer call.

The 2022 election analysis

In May 2022 the party executive set up a review of the political situation, campaign, message and organisation, chaired by Waltersson Grönvall; the resulting report, Maktskiftesvalet 2022 – en resa in i det okända, argues that the aim had been a new government rather than a maximum Moderate vote, and that the choices produced 176 seats for Ulf Kristersson's side. It also says the party joined governing arrangements in 177 of 290 municipalities, up 22, while its share of regional arrangements fell from 13 to 11, and that the Riksdag vote slipped from 19.8 percent in 2018 to 19.1 percent, a third fall in a row. Published on 9 March 2023, it was released under the heading "Vi vann och vi förlorade". The Election Authority's final count was 19.10 percent and 68 seats, behind the Sweden Democrats on 20.54 percent and 73.

The report credits an opposition-friendly issue agenda, a majority who thought the country and the economy were going wrong, a more effective Moderate and Sweden Democrat campaign, a coalition that was just large enough, and household costs, notably electricity and fuel, and it treats aversion to the Sweden Democrats, Magdalena Andersson's popularity and a polarising agenda as reasons the margin was smaller, adding that women's support had to rise for re-election. In Dagens Nyheter the authors wrote that the main line might run between the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats rather than between the Social Democrats and the Moderates. Svenska Dagbladet reported that reading, and the group's view that the party was relatively weak on welfare, needed a broader profile and should keep building its organisation.

Stockholm city and Gothenburg, the report says, supplied 21 percent of Moderate Riksdag votes in 1973 and just over 14 percent in 2022, with the heaviest 2022 losses in Stockholm municipality, Stockholm County and southern Skåne; women, big-city residents and pensioners leaned to Andersson's side, and men, first-time voters and voters in smaller places to Kristersson's, a gap the text ties partly to a crime, economy and energy profile and answers with a call for a broader appeal and a stronger organisation. Waltersson Grönvall said the position had to be taken seriously, and that choices like those she credited with 2022 were now required to break three elections of decline.

Minister for Social Services

Appointment and the Kristersson cabinet

Camilla Waltersson Grönvall, of the Moderate Party, was appointed minister for social services (socialtjänstminister) on 18 October 2022 in Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s cabinet. On 17 October the Riksdag had approved him by 176 votes to 173. The Moderates, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Sweden Democrats voted yes after signing the Tidö Agreement. The first three parties formed the government; the Sweden Democrats supported it from outside.

Kristersson named the ministers the same day. In the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (Socialdepartementet) she was socialtjänstminister beside Jakob Forssmed as minister for social affairs, Acko Ankarberg Johansson as minister for health care and Anna Tenje as minister for older people and social security.

She came from the Riksdag, where she had sat since 4 October 2010 and been the Moderates’ social-policy spokesperson from 2017. Chapter 4, Section 13 of the Instrument of Government provides that a member who belongs to the government does not exercise the seat; a substitute does. She is on leave for the western constituency of Västra Götaland County from 18 October 2022 to 23 September 2030. Jennie Wernäng (Moderate) substituted from 25 October 2022 to 28 September 2026, after higher-placed candidates declined the seat; Dennis Alvdén has held it since.

On 17 September 2026, after that year's election, Kristersson asked to be dismissed. He and the other ministers are released from their appointments but keep the posts until a new government takes office, and he said he would go on governing as head of a caretaker government (övergångsregering).

Portfolio and the ministry

The post sits inside Socialdepartementet and is not the headship of the ministry, which rests with Forssmed. A Government Offices division of labour, published on 14 February 2023 and updated on 2 October 2025, assigns her social services—including care of children and young people, disability care, substance-abuse care and other social assistance—disability policy, children’s-rights policy, and Swedish and international adoptions. Health care, public health, care of older people and social insurance stay with the other ministers. Ankarberg Johansson left the health-care post in September 2025, and Elisabet Lann succeeded her. In January 2023 Waltersson Grönvall described her own office as the first dedicated (renodlad) social-services ministership, set apart within the ministry from the minister for social affairs.

On 16–17 January 2023 she led Sweden’s delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva; the government said a minister, rather than a state secretary, was heading that delegation for the first time.

Social services reform

The 2025 Social Services Act

The Social Services Act that Camilla Waltersson Grönvall carried as minister replaced the statute then in force in Sweden. The government bill described that law as still largely based on the first Social Services Act (SFS 1980:620), in force from 1 January 1982; what the new act repealed was the recast Social Services Act (2001:453). A review of the 2001 act had been ordered in 2017 (directive 2017:39). The inquiry Framtidens socialtjänst published an interim report in April 2018 and, in August 2020, Hållbar socialtjänst – En ny socialtjänstlag (SOU 2020:47). The bill also used later memorandums from the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs on providers’ duty to supply information and on a clearer crime-prevention task for social boards.

On 23 January 2025 Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Waltersson Grönvall submitted Government Bill 2024/25:89, En förebyggande socialtjänstlag – för ökade rättigheter, skyldigheter och möjligheter. The Riksdag committee on social affairs backed the bill, with a supplement and editorial changes, in report 2024/25:SoU23, which contained 29 reservations from the Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Centre Party and the Green Party. On 20 May 2025 the chamber adopted that proposal. The act itself passed without a recorded division. Several reservations were voted down, among them one on the finances, which fell by 254 votes to 18 with the Greens abstaining. The Social Services Act (2025:400) was issued on 22 May 2025, took effect on 1 July 2025 and repealed the 2001 act the same day.

The act is set out in nine divisions. Social services shall work preventively and be easy to reach, and the work shall follow science and proven experience. Planning covers all of social services, and the municipality shall give particular weight to early and preventive measures. Waltersson Grönvall later called that rule a “shall” requirement (ska-krav): early prevention was no longer optional. Social boards may offer some services without an individual needs assessment, so help can start before a full investigation; more intrusive measures still require one. Provisions on children are redrafted in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including the child’s best interests, the child’s views and a right to information the child can understand. Reports of concern about a child become searchable in the case file, a change she said was added after the original inquiry, and the social board shall work to prevent and counteract crime.

Financing and implementation

The bill put state transition support, from money added in the 2024 budget, at 8 billion kronor through 2028: 200 million in 2024, 1.2 billion in 2025 and 2.2 billion a year in 2026–2028, subject to parliamentary grant, for staffing and skills. A separate stream was proposed for crime prevention — 200 million kronor in 2025, 300 million in 2026 and 600 million a year in 2027–2028 — plus 30 million in 2025 and then 60 million a year in the general grant to municipalities. Counted through 2028, the two packages come to just under 10 billion kronor. Asked by Akademikern whether “almost ten billion”, crime-prevention funds included, would do, she said ten billion was a large sum and that she was not ruling out more after an evaluation, while calling the priority a municipal one. From 2026 the grants are set in ordinance and paid by the National Board of Health and Welfare; municipalities requisition them without applying.

In November 2025 she said municipalities had come different distances. The hard parts, she said, were new methods and giving the change enough time. Because prevention was now a duty, other spending might have to wait — “perhaps there is a roundabout that will have to wait a few years.” She said municipalities furthest along were already seeing placement costs fall, and that a first evaluation and a roundtable at the ministry were planned for the beginning of March 2026.

Criticism

They cited tight municipal budgets and recruitment trouble, a police estimate of 62,000 people with gang links, and well over 1,000 reports a day of concern for a child, against just over 86 billion kronor for the justice system in the same budget. When the Riksdag voted, Vision’s chair Veronica Magnusson said that without longer funding the act risked staying “fine words”, and that proposals from the inquiry on intermediate coercion — electronic monitoring of minors and imposed measures on guardians — cut against knowledge-based work and could deter people from seeking help.

In October 2025 the social workers Fanny Eklund, Emma Wennerström and Nina Micaux argued in Aftonbladet that plans beside the act — a benefit cap, fines for parents who refuse services, electronic monitoring of children who had not been convicted, and prison from age 13 — conflicted with a statute meant to meet people early and to rest on trust. They pointed to a petition they said more than 2,300 social workers had signed. Waltersson Grönvall replied that the preventive duty was meant to give social workers better conditions, that close to half of parents who are offered help decline it, and that a power to fine parents who refuse was meant to reach more children sooner so that fewer cases ended in compulsory care. Those coercive proposals were not part of the 2025 act.

Child protection

Lex Lilla hjärtat

In late January 2020 police found a three-year-old girl dead in an apartment in Norrköping. Publicly known as “Lilla hjärtat” (Esmeralda), she had lived in foster care from infancy until compulsory care ended and she was returned to her biological parents after a court dispute. In June 2021 Göta Court of Appeal convicted her mother of manslaughter (dråp) and sentenced her to eight years’ imprisonment for failing to obtain medical care she knew the child needed.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party government, under social minister Lena Hallengren, answered with bill 2021/22:178, Barnets bästa när vård enligt LVU upphör – lex lilla hjärtat. From 1 July 2022 a child cared for under the Care of Young Persons (Special Provisions) Act (lagen med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av unga, LVU, 1990:52) was not to be moved home unless circumstances had changed in a lasting and thorough way (varaktigt och genomgripande). Boards had to consider a custody transfer after two years in the same foster home, down from three, and could ask custodians for a drug test before a return.

As the Moderate Party’s social-policy spokesperson, Camilla Waltersson Grönvall said she was “very disappointed” in Charlotte Lönnheim’s inquiry of 10 March 2021. It did not make the child’s best interests an independent ground for continuing a placement, a step from Håkan Ceder’s 2015 inquiry that she said had been left “in the drawer”. The Left Party’s Maj Carlsson objected on similar lines. The Riksdag social affairs committee then appointed its own investigator; Waltersson Grönvall said the government’s inquiry “does not hold up”. Chair Heike Erkers said the “lasting and thorough” test was unclear unless it was also secured that no new circumstances had arisen before care ended. In June 2025 SVT found uneven use of the custody rule. A February 2025 survey, answered by 277 of 290 municipalities, showed that in December 2024 4,830 children in those municipalities had lived in the same foster home for two years or more, while the municipalities applied in 2024 to transfer custody for 748 children, about 15 percent. That figure counts applications, not judgments. Citing the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen), SVT reported 597 court transfers in 2023. Foster homes often declined for fear of losing support; 20 municipalities said they began to follow the two-year rule only in 2024, and a handful had not started. Waltersson Grönvall, by then minister for social services, said that following Swedish law is not optional.

Proposals to replace the Care of Young Persons Act

On 1 December 2025 Waltersson Grönvall and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson presented a draft to replace the 1990 Act with two statutes, one on care orders and one on special powers in state residential care, with comments due by 19 January 2026 and a proposed start on 1 January 2027. Most LVU rules would remain, but strong attachment to a foster home could itself keep care in force, so a child need not return to biological parents the child barely knew. A custodian’s scope to demand, repeatedly, that care end would be limited, and the grounds would be adjusted for criminal environments and honour-based violence. Children’s rights would have their own chapter, and the right to a public counsel would be widened.

She called it “lex Lilla hjärtat på riktigt”. Omni reported that she was tearful and said the law could have saved Esmeralda’s life; Dagens Nyheter quoted her that it could have saved “Lilla hjärtat”. Kristersson said children are not plants to be moved when it suits a biological family. She told Altinget the reform could have come much earlier had the previous government not refused. Hallengren called that “an artificial conflict” (en konstgjord konflikt).

Proposition 2025/26:294, submitted on 30 June 2026 and signed by Waltersson Grönvall and social-affairs minister Jakob Forssmed, went to the Riksdag. After debate on 12 August 2026 the chamber approved it on 13 August, following social affairs committee report 2025/26:SoU38. The report recorded six reservations and rejected motions from the Social Democrats, the Green Party and the Left Party, among others. The rules are to apply from 1 January 2027.

Bris (Barnens rätt i samhället), on 19 January 2026, supported limits on requests to bring a child home, a wider right to counsel, and “negative social control” as a ground, but neither supported nor opposed care based on foster-home attachment. It opposed dropping a requirement of palpable risk of harm after secure youth custody, and opposed moving powers of the National Board of Institutional Care (Statens institutionsstyrelse) into a separate act. It also warned that a focus on criminal environments could turn compulsory care into a tool for protecting society from children, and criticised a consultation of about six weeks over Christmas.

Violence against children

On 30 July 2026 the government adopted En uppväxt fri från våld, a national strategy based on the inquiry SOU 2022:70. It sets a zero vision that every child in Sweden grow up free from violence, violations and abuse, with four aims: prevention, detection, protection and support, and children’s rights in criminal proceedings. Waltersson Grönvall said abuse and threats, offline and online, are unacceptable. The strategy is to be reviewed at least every five years.

The Ombudsman for Children (Barnombudsmannen) is to coordinate seven other agencies and the county administrative boards. The National Board of Health and Welfare is to inform the public, map support for children abused online, and, with the police, identify violence against children drawn into crime. The police and the Prosecution Authority are to handle children’s cases promptly and secure their right to information.

Disability policy

Personal assistance and LSS

As minister for social services, Camilla Waltersson Grönvall is responsible for disability policy, including the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS, 1993:387) and personal assistance. State assistance compensation is paid by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan); municipalities decide LSS services, including much personal assistance and companion services (ledsagning).

The 2022 Tidö Agreement, between the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Sweden Democrats, set state responsibility for personal assistance within LSS as an aim, to be considered after an inquiry expected in March 2023. That transfer has not been enacted.

The government sets the hourly standard amount (schablonbelopp) each year. For 2025 it proposed a 3 per cent rise, to 342.60 kronor an hour from 1 January, and said it would examine indexation. A slide at the 18 September 2024 press conference instead said indexation would be introduced. Answering Nadja Awad of the Left Party in the Riksdag on 14 October 2025, she called the slide a mistake, corrected on the government website on 25 September 2025, and said there had been no intention to mislead. Awad said she had promised indexation, including at Almedalen; she replied that only an examination had been promised. The 2026 ordinance raised the amount by 1.5 per cent, to 347 kronor and 70 öre.

Since 2023 a standardised parental deduction has left ordinary parental responsibility out of a child’s assistance assessment. From 1 January 2025 those age-based hours were halved. Waltersson Grönvall called personal assistance “an important freedom reform” (frihetsreform) and said the change strengthened children’s right to it. She has said that what worries her most is municipalities pulling back from LSS, which she called municipal law.

Welfare crime and oversight

In April 2025 the government appointed an inquiry, to report by 8 January 2027, on welfare crime in personal assistance and on more predictable decisions. It is to propose follow-up of compensation, whether assistance by relatives should be regulated, checks that assistance was actually provided, and an LSS inspectorate for safety, quality and legality. No inspectorate has been established. Waltersson Grönvall said the scheme “is a freedom reform that must never be exploited in the wrong way.” The Sweden Democrats’ Jessica Stegrud said criminal gangs turned over more from plundering welfare, not least personal assistance, than from narcotics.

Response from disability organisations

Funktionsrätt Sverige’s chair, Nicklas Mårtensson, said on 22 September 2025 that the organisation was dissatisfied that the announced indexation had not been decided and that a 1.5 per cent rise was far below cost increases. Riksförbundet FUB welcomed an LSS inspectorate inside the Health and Social Care Inspectorate (IVO) but feared that regulating assistance by relatives could unacceptably limit self-determination. RBU said crime should be examined, but that more surveillance, tighter checks, limits on family assistants and location-tracking would collectively punish people who need the support. At an October 2026 Stockholm demonstration, DHR Region Stockholm’s Anna Westerberg spoke for preserving LSS, while other speakers demanded a higher, indexed hourly amount.

Sweden’s combined second and third report under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was examined in Geneva. The committee criticised tighter access to assistance, recorded that about 1,500 people lost it in 2015–2022, noted that people over 66 cannot apply and that provision varies by municipality, and called for nationally consistent assistance, including for those groups.

Social services and crime

Gang recruitment and prevention

The Tidö Agreement of October 2022, between the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Sweden Democrats, treated social services as a way to stop children entering criminal networks. Crime prevention was to be written into a reformed social-services law, municipal prevention regulated by statute, and a national task force used where violence had escalated or staff were overstretched.

As minister, Camilla Waltersson Grönvall tied that programme to recruitment into criminal networks.

From 1 December 2025, SFS 2025:934—issued on 23 October 2025 after the Riksdag approved proposition 2024/25:180—lets one authority give another information covered by chapters 21–40 of the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act when needed to prevent, detect or investigate crime, or certain incorrect payments and rule-breaking. A balancing test remains, and listed rules, including much health-care secrecy and some social-services secrecy, are excluded; school secrecy and general social-services secrecy are not. In August 2024 she told SVT that HVB homes which, according to the police, had links to organised crime “should not exist, they should be closed.” The preventive duty in the 2025 Social Services Act, and the separate reform of compulsory care, are treated elsewhere.

Interventions without consent

Ds 2024:30, an inquiry led by Anna Tengberg and modelled on Denmark’s injunctions for parents and young people, proposed that a social board could, without consent, require guardians to take part in open support on pain of a conditional fine (vite); set conditions for children and young people on schooling, leisure or training, sobriety and being at home, earlier than under the existing intermediate-coercion rule; and use electronic monitoring to check a home condition. In Aftonbladet on 27 October 2025 she wrote that nearly half of parents offered support declined it, and that she could never accept that society “ser på när barn far illa” (looks on while children come to harm). A fine, she said, would protect children rather than punish parents.

The Riksdag adopted proposition 2025/26:295, presented on 30 June 2026. SFS 2026:1637, issued on 20 August 2026, enters into force on 2 January 2027. Consent remains first, but a board may order interventions for guardians and for children and young people under 21 where concrete circumstances suggest harm at home or behaviour such as crime or harmful substance use, and consent cannot be obtained. Conditions may require schooling, leisure or training, sobriety (with samples) and presence at home between 18:00 and 07:00. A guardian’s decision may carry a fine, not convertible into imprisonment, and the Swedish Police Authority may temporarily take a child or young person who breaks a presence condition. Electronic monitoring is in SFS 2026:1638, in force only when the government sets a date: an administrative court may order it, not under 13, and only to prevent crime if the reasons outweigh the intrusion.

Vision’s chair, Veronica Magnusson, said forced support lacked research backing, could undermine confidence and could expose children to violence or reprisals, against the direction of the new Social Services Act. On 16 April 2026 BRIS said fines and compulsion were not an early intervention and could increase violence at home. Peter Andersson, a lecturer in social work at Stockholm University, wrote in August 2025 that research tied lasting change to voluntary relationships, not control, and that the inquiry’s figure for refused consent rested on limited studies.

Personal life

Family

Camilla Waltersson Grönvall lives in Lilla Edet, in Västra Götaland County. The Government Offices state that she is married and has three children. In an interview published on 29 January 2024 by the social-care magazine Omtanke, she was identified as married to Niclas Grönvall, with three children then aged 14, 17 and 19. She said that remaining on the west coast, about 50 kilometres north of Gothenburg, worked reasonably well alongside work in Stockholm, and that she tried to be present for the children despite the travel. She called them her pride, said they took an interest in public affairs, and described a musical household in which the children also played and sang.

Niclas Grönvall is Fastighetsbyrån’s local estate agent in Lilla Edet. Company information compiled by Allabolag for Niclas Grönvall AB, registered in the municipality, lists Bo Niclas Grönvall on the board and Maria Camilla Valtersson Grönvall — the register spelling of her name — as a deputy board member.

Her younger sister, Mikaela Waltersson, is also a Moderate Party politician. When Waltersson Grönvall joined Ulf Kristersson’s government as minister for social services, Hallandsposten on 18 October 2022 reported the appointment as the regional leader’s sister becoming a minister, and described Camilla as the older sister. Mikaela Waltersson took the chair of the executive board of Region Halland on 2 April 2018, succeeding Mats Eriksson, who had been the region’s leading politician for 15 years. Region Halland’s own account of how the region is governed, updated on 22 October 2026, still listed her as chair of that board.

Public appearances

In the Omtanke interview she said that she plays the piano and sings, and that she had sung in the Riksdag choir. She added that the government had no choir — “not yet, anyway”. She named Scotland as the private destination that meant most to her, and said travel was probably what she liked best, alongside music. The magazine’s fact box listed travel, with Scotland as the favourite, together with music, singing and reading, as her preferred relaxation.

The local paper Alekuriren interviewed her in Lilla Edet for an article published on 23 July 2024. She said that on a free day she most wanted to be with her family, and that “the greatest luxury is a day with nothing booked”; the family was to drive to Italy that summer. The paper also noted that she listened to music from the 1980s and watched American police series. She said she spent considerably more days in Stockholm as a minister than she had as a member of the Riksdag, and that she followed the municipal debate in Lilla Edet only from a distance because there had not been time to remain on the council.