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Mistakes in evictions in the benefits affair have been painstakingly acknowledged.

Mistakes in evictions in the benefits affair have been painstakingly acknowledged. 'Child care must learn to say sorry'

Rosalie Mulder • October 1, 2024, 19:18 • Groningen

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Ellen Loykens and Yke de Jong. Photo: Jaspar Moulijn

Youth services still have difficulty recognizing and learning from mistakes during and after the relocation of children of affected parents from the benefits affair. This is what Groningen youth mental health institution Molendrift sees, which helps allowance parents throughout the Netherlands.

“Saying sorry isn't in the youth care sector, nor do you have doubts. It would be better if we did learn that,” say behavioral scientists Yke de Jong and Ellen Loykens van Molendrift.

Together, they help people throughout the Netherlands who have been affected by the benefits affair and whose young children are still removed from home, with usually little or no contact with each other. To do this, the two behavioral scientists talk to parents, young people and youth care institutions.

The main goal is to give parents insight into what has happened in recent years so that they better understand how they ended up in this situation. Because, according to De Jong and Loykens, parents do not feel heard, understood or acknowledged. In addition, the care workers can also come to solutions with these new insights. “Everyone can learn from it,” says De Jong.

Beeld gemaakt ter illustratie op basis van een stockfoto.

Laura (30) from East Groningen lost more than money due to the benefits affair. That's how she got her kids back home.

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Complicated causes

The pain point is often what was the immediate reason for taking children out of the home. Youth Protection states that no children were wrongly placed elsewhere, because there were always more problems with parents than just the debts from the benefits affair. But Loykens calls that a simplification: the benefits affair has always played a crucial role.

De Jong gives an example: “I had a business with a mother who had her life in order, but always had to pay due to wrong attacks. In the end, she couldn't afford anything, she stole groceries, was arrested and then her children were removed from home.”

Thirty analyses

Molendrift is usually called in by the so-called national support team (OT) that was set up in 2022 at the request of the House of Representatives to help benefit parents with displaced children restore contact with their children. This involves very complicated things that parents have usually been working on for five to ten years.

Based on the discussions with parents and involved youth care institutions, Molendrift makes so-called shared explanatory analyses: a brief overview of the situation and possible changes, with the aim that everyone involved can agree. And because this includes the payment debts and the role of care, this often gives parents recognition, see De Jong and Loykens.

The Groningen mental health institution has around thirty cases throughout the Netherlands (compared to nine hundred at the OT), including four in the North. Of those thirty, ten have a positive development, with six parents restoring contact with their children and where four children are living at home again.

“Suspicious, reticent attitude”

During the discussions, Loykens and De Jong regularly experience a “suspicious, reluctant, blank attitude” of youth protection and foster care against these explanatory analyses.

Both emphasize that care workers involved in the relocation acted correctly according to guidelines in force at that time. But that action has often worked out wrong, says De Jong, and it needs to be recognized. Loykens: “As a counselor, you have to want to understand what happened. The desirable response from youth services would be to look at these issues again. If that's the attitude, all I see are forgiving parents.”