<p>The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child guarantee the rights of children to have a family. Based on a&#xa0;number of personal pediatric and adolescent psychiatric experiences concerning the handling of “difficult” children and families by the Youth Welfare Office (YWO), this article attempts the placement in “out-of-home child care” without an appropriate clarification, under the title “threat to child well-being”, for children with neither the use of violence nor neglect but medical grounds, such as school refusal of autistic children. In this context, the three roles of the YWO (procedure management, counselling and support of affected families, and organization of out of home placement) is a construct that enables the sovereign rights without appropriate control. The aim of this article is to untangle these tasks to strengthen the main function of counselling and support, to put the clarification of parenting ability on an extended and team-based foundation and to primarily limit the often traumatic decision for an external placement to cases of neglect and endangerment to children punishable under criminal law, to assign these to juvenile courts and to solve medical problems in cooperation with the medical care facilities. This would improve the main task of the YWO of counselling and support of affected families and structure the work of the YWO personnel much more efficiently.</p>