Benefits affair shows: Child care is careless when it comes to moving children out of the home
Benefits affair shows: Child care is careless when it comes to moving children out of the home
Youth care in the Netherlands needs to get better. The goal is that far fewer children are placed out of the home. This is an important part of the benefits affair. Research shows that children of parents who were suspected of fraud with benefits are too easily removed from home.
Frank Timmers 26-03-25, 21:59
This is what the Committee on Allowances and Removals informed victims of the benefits affair on Wednesday evening. They were informed online about research into the connection between the benefits affair and the relocation of young people and children. On Thursday, the committee, led by Mariëtte Hamer, will make the results fully public.
Families destroyed
In its report “Legacy of Injustice”, the Hamer Committee comes to three main conclusions. The first is that the benefits affair has destroyed families. Families that had no problems before were devastated when they were labeled fraudsters and needed to pay back thousands of euros.
For families who did already have problems, according to Hamer, it was “the final blow”. The committee notes that a number of relocations would not have occurred without the benefits affair. “There really is a relationship,” Hamer said. She did not mention the numbers on Wednesday evening.
Failing Child Care
The fact that it can come to this is also too expensive for Youth Welfare. According to Hamer, if there had been better assistance, a lot of removals could have been prevented. Hamer said: “Too little attention has been paid to what was really going on in families. The assistance has not been good enough.”
The third conclusion is that children who have been removed from home have the last of them to this day. The recognition in the chat during the online presentation to emotional reactions. A victim must fight back tears. Another describes the neglect and abuse “that our children face.”
Recognition
The Hamer committee listed the three most important considerations on Wednesday evening. The first is that the children of parents of the allowance affair should be victims as independent victims and not as the children of. This recognition should then lead to extensive support for them to build a future. Now, they are still far too difficult and are up against walls with municipalities.
Secondly, there is work to be done for Youth Welfare. It needs to function better. The number of relocations should decrease in the future. “It really needs to be much less,” says Hamer. “Youth services look far too little at what is going on in the family.”
Trust in citizens
The third recommendation is the call on politicians and partly as youth services and children's judges to take up the report together with parents and children. According to Hamer, that means a change in culture. Does she want to operate too much on the basis of distrust of citizens. Children and parents deserve more trust.
Hamer said that the report is much more comprehensive in terms of consequences and proposed. On Thursday, she also convinced the first copies to children and parents who are victims of the benefits scandal. After that, three concerned state secretaries will get one and they will have to say something.
On my own
Hamer briefly addressed Wednesday's news that many victims of the benefits affair brought into my home. The news was that the tax authorities and politicians have had data since October of people who may have wrongly been victims of the benefits affair. Hamer hinted that the leaks of this news were deliberately waiting for the committee to come out with the report. “It just makes me combative,” she said.
On Thursday afternoon, the House of Representatives will discuss the Childcare Allowance Recovery Operation. Parents indicated in the chat on Wednesday evening that they are afraid that there are few events with the report. Hamer said: “That is also a very big concern for us, but we will have the strongest possible surface tomorrow and will follow politically that they will do our best.”
The benefits affair is the scandal involving fraud with childcare allowance and severely affected thousands of parents. This causes financial problems, compensated suffering and, in some cases, the relocation of children.
.avif)