Municipalities losing track of kids placed out of home, scattered across the country

Dutch municipalities are losing track of the kids they are placing out of home in crisis situations. Due to a major shortage of youth care places, these kids are scattered across the country and often end up in the care of commercial youth care companies, according to research by Follow the Money and Pointer.

One such place is the Veluwe Hoenderloo site, where 20 mostly new healthcare companies are sheltering kids from across the country. At the end of last year, Jeugdstem, the independent counselor for children, sounded the alarm about children feeling unsafe at the Hoenderloo location.

The fact that children from all over the country end up in places like Hoenderloo is against government policy of organizing care close to home, Jeugdstem told Pointer. “Situations like Hoenderloo mean that children stay far away from their family and network and have to go to another school, even if there is no substantive reason for this,” a spokesperson said.

Municipalities have been responsible for youth care since its decentralization in 2015. Although municipalities are often dependent on youth protectors’ placement choices, they are ultimately responsible for the children. However, Pointer and FTM found that municipalities do not always have insight into where these children are living and who is caring for them.

For example, the municipality of Arnhem said that it could not extract from its data whether any of its children are staying at the Hoenderloo location. Pointer knows that there are Arnhem kids there. The same applies to the municipality of Amersfoort. A spokesperson said that the municipality has contracts with several youth care providers who are also active in Hoenderloo, but the municipality does not know whether any Amersfoort children have been placed at the Hoenderloo site.

There is a massive shortage in places of safety, especially for children with complex problems, Niels Naaldenberg of Youth Protection Gelderland said. Before the decentralization of youth care, the agency worked with about 10 care providers. Now it’s around 200. “But there are still too few shelter places.” They sometimes have to place children in places where municipalities and youth protection services rather wouldn’t. “The alternative is the street. So then there is no choice, and we have to place them.” In such cases, youth protection monitors the care provided extra closely, Naaldenberg added.