Youth care protectors go on strike to protest work pressure

Employees of the Youth Protection will begin striking throughout the country from Monday, according to FNV Youth Care. In the first stage, office services such as answering the telephone will be removed. Later on, the strike may scale up to completely ceasing office services and considerably decreasing home visits.

According to the union, the actions are necessary because the work pressure on youth care workers is very high. Youth protectors assist on average twice as many families as is recommended for safety reasons, according to the FNV on the basis of its own inventory.

If it is up to the association, 5,000 youth care workers must be added as soon as possible. This will only succeed if working in youth protection becomes more attractive, according to the FNV, which demands that "the Cabinet pay for extra staff." There must also be a national standard for the maximum number of families that employees can have in their portfolios.

"In fact, this sector has already fallen. The fact that children and families in vulnerable situations are still being helped is only because the current youth protectors have not yet given up," says director Maaike van der Aar of FNV Youth Care. "To be able to save this, a hard emergency brake is now needed."

The severe shortage of youth care protectors means that they are often not sent to vulnerable children in a timely manner, RTL Nieuws found in June. At Youth Protection Rotterdam Rijnmond, the wait time was up to 60 days, for example.