Research: 'No type of victims in the Allowance affair evicted from home just because of debts'

News

Debt problems A report by the Council for the Judiciary does not address the parents' question if victims of the Benefits affair are in financial problems, or because they have problems that would otherwise have led to eviction. “Unfortunately, we cannot confirm the procedure for the problems.”

- Kim Bos
Published onMarch 31, 2025

In “the entire chain” of youth care, more attention should be paid to the effect of debts on families. That is one of the considerations in a research that was done on behalf of the Council for the Judiciary. Researchers emphasized the evictions of children of victims in the Allowance Affair. When the tax authorities claim, you will be entitled to a refund.

Researchers are analysing the records of 397 removals. The central question was: how many children's judges took financial problems into account as a result of the Benefits Affair when deciding to evict a species?

From the report The weighting of debts in case of relocations it appears that “no species” was removed from home solely due to financial problems. Judges did see value in most cases, but when deciding to remove children from home, other family problems were at the forefront.

Sequence

This report does not further address the question that the several thousand children were removed from home because their parents were in financial trouble due to the Allowance scandal or because of problems that would otherwise have led to eviction. “Unfortunately, we cannot determine the order in which problems arose based on our files,” says Henk Naves, chairman of the Council for the Judiciary, in the report. “We realise that this may be disappointing for affected parents and affected children.”

It is known that a lot of stress can cause, among other things, “housing problems, disrupted relationships and mental problems,” the report states. If, as a result, an unsafe home situation occurs, the children's court may find himself unable to move out of home.

If a request for removal is made, the children's court or the legal conditions are met. Previous reflections from Youth Welfare Netherlands and the Child Protection Council showed that signs indicated financial problems, ten were likely to be signs of “bad parenting”. Such as “the absence of toys, unhygienic living spaces, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, doing business infrequently and having no transport”.

An earlier report just mentioned that the Allowance affair played a major role in the relocation of children.

Debts were also “not a structural topic of discussion”, according to Youth Welfare Netherlands and the Council for Child Protection in case of evictions.

It is “very important” that youth care employees have a better insight into problematic issues, write the researchers. “They can already — known — contribute help, for example by characterizing parents as debt counseling or administration.”

In this way, this information also comes to the table of the children's court, who ultimately decides on eviction. The children's judge can discuss the serious one during the oral hearing. Possible steps can then be discussed at the hearing; a court debt officer can bring the parents into contact with municipal debt counseling.

In their report, the researchers also recommend making the decisions of the children's judges more practical. They note that some of the statements lack the concrete motives for the eviction.

Hammer

Last week, a committee of inquiry led by Mariëtte Hamer already presented the report. Legacy of Injustice , about evictions among victims of the Allowance Affair. This showed that the Allowance Affair played a major role in the eviction of children from affected families. A seven-member committee, consisting of experienced experts, a former children's judge and a member of various disciplines, spoke to 35 children, 64 parents and numerous experts for two years. Hamer's report went against the assumption that the Benefits affair would have had little impact on evictions, because families would have major problems beforehand.