More than 1,100 children of victims in the Benefits Affair were removed from their homes between 2015 and 2020. This is evident from figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). An estimate, says CBS itself, is surrounded by uncertainties. But the figures show that the full extent of the government failure surrounding the childcare allowance is only partially in the picture.
In the Allowances affair, in which many thousands of parents were wrongly forced to repay childcare allowance, it is often about numbers. At 47,000: the number of parents who reported as victims at the end of September. Or at 18,000: the number of parents who have now also been recognized as victims and who have received an initial compensation of 30,000 euros. Or for the thousands still waiting for a very first review.
It is much less about the tens of thousands of children who grew up in their families and who also suffered all the misery of the Allowances affair. They had to deal with sudden poverty, homelessness, divorce – and therefore also with out-of-home placements.
heavy medium
A forced out-of-home placement is a serious remedy, intended for situations in which the development of the child is at risk. In such a case, the Child Protection Board asks the juvenile court to place a child ‘under supervision’, either with a foster family or in an institution. Approximately 20,000 children have currently been placed out of their homes in the Netherlands, often for several years.
Stories about evictions surrounding the affair have been around for some time, but the extent was unknown until this week. ‘Allowance parents’ recently threw in de Volkskrant the suggestion that there could be hundreds of cases. Members of parliament asked questions, the cabinet was unable to provide the answers – but promised to have it sorted out.
Statistics Netherlands then placed the data on custodial placements from recent years next to a list of around 50,000 children who have been designated as victims in the Allowances Affair. The question: was there overlap? Yes, as it turned out for hundreds of families.
The figures fluctuated during the five years that Statistics Netherlands investigated. At the peak, in 2018, there were about 565 children who had been placed outside their families, at the end of December 2020 there were still 420. A total of 1,115 children of benefit parents had been placed out of their homes at some point between 2015 and 2020.
These are just numbers, CBS emphasized on Tuesday. By this, the bureau means: these figures do not imply that the out-of-home placement was a direct result of the allowance misery. They can be families with many plagues: victims of the Allowances affair and struggling with problems at home.
On the other hand, the actual number of children of benefit parents placed out of home can easily be higher. For practical reasons, CBS only has data from 2015, the year in which the new Youth Act came into effect. But the Allowances affair has already happened before – and the first stories about custodial placements are also older.
parliamentary questions
That’s how the story went de Volkskrant, which prompted the parliamentary questions about a mother who more than ten years ago had to give up her children after she had to pay tens of thousands of euros due to a suspicion of fraud and lost her house.
Other parents questioned the completeness of the figures based on their own experiences, for example because they were separated from their partner and the child had been transferred from one parent to another. This does not count as an eviction notice.
In order to repair the financial and emotional damage caused by the Allowances affair among children, the caretaker cabinet wants to set up a special children’s scheme.
Last week, the cabinet had to admit that it had no insight into the number of out-of-home placements. Even after the CBS report, the uncertainty about this remains great, to the chagrin of the House of Representatives. “This makes it clear that the government has completely lost an overview of the consequences of its own policy,” said MP Pieter Omtzigt.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 20, 2021
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