Parents want Cabinet to bring kids home after custodial placements in benefits scandal

It is not enough that the government wants to "improve" the situation of families where a child was removed from their home during the benefits scandal. That said Arre Zuurmond, chairman of the panel of victimized parents who advise the Cabinet. The Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, will debate on Thursday with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other MInisters about the over a thousand children in the scandal who were placed out of their parental homes.

According to the panel, the Cabinet must strive to bring parent and child back together where possible. "This is just not good enough," said Zuurmond about Frank Weerwind's (Legal Protection) current ambition. "It shouldn't have happened, and we need to see where we can fix it now."

Zuurmond suggests going to court again on several cases. "They say: we cannot undo it because the judge has decided this way." But there is now more information about these cases, the panel's chairman emphasized. So a judge could reconsider.

Zuurmond acknowledged that the financial problems resulting from the government's derailed fraud hunt were not the only reason for all custodial placements. "But it may have been the push." This also means that there are families for whom custodial placement would not have happened without the childcare allowance affair, he said.

The parent panel also hopes that Thursday's debate will focus on the problems that many parents still encounter, including those whose children were placed out of their homes. "Formal parties" like the Council of State, the Dutch Data Protection Authority, and the Court of Audit, are blocking parents who want financial compensation and, for example, psychological recovery, according to the parent panel.

According to Zuurmond, these bodies adhere to strict rules. "For parents, it's like playing football on a field where you are knee-deep in mud," said the panel chairman.

On Thursday, the Cabinet will face an extremely critical Tweede Kamer about the children removed from their homes in the childcare allowance affair. Prime Minister Mark Rutte will attend the debate at the Kamer's insistence. Minister Weerwind (Legal Protection) and State Secretaries Aukje de Vries (Allowances) and Maarten van Ooijen (Youth Care) will also be thre.

On Wednesday, Statistics Netherlands announced that 1,675 children whose parents were victims of the benefits scandal were placed out of their homes between 2015 and 2021. The actual number may be higher, according to the stats office. At the end of 2021, 555 of the children placed out of their homes were still not back with their parents or guardians.

A study done ahead of Thursday's debate concluded that Dutch law does not prevent kids from being taken from their homes because of their parents' financial difficulties. In the childcare allowance scandal, youth protection institutions and judges denied that custodial placements happened over financial problems. But the researchers could not rule it out.

On Wednesday, foundation Het Vergeten Kind published a study showing that kids in the youth care system have very little stability after a custodial placement. Three-quarters of them are moved to different homes an average of four times after being taken from their parents. A third said they didn't know they were being moved until a day or even hours before it happened.