Minor asylum seekers who have come to the Netherlands without parents need better help. Guardianship organization Nidos must therefore improve the support for unaccompanied minor refugees, says the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ).
According to the inspectorate, the young people have often suffered trauma and their future is uncertain. In the Netherlands, they can be accommodated in small locations or with host families.
Nidos must assess which risks young people run when placed, but is not doing this well enough at the moment, the inspectorate notes. The files are also not kept properly and it is not clear enough that youth protectors act “systematically and purposefully”.
The guardianship organization says that it recognizes the conclusions of the IGJ and that it is working on improvements. The organization points out that it currently has to supervise more than nine thousand young people, three times as many as in 2021. According to Nidos, this increase “naturally creates challenges”.
The inspectorate also acknowledges that many young refugees have come to the Netherlands in recent years and that there are too few places for them.
IGJ received reports and signals of abuses
Last March, it was announced that the IGJ was investigating Nidos. The inspectorate had received several signals and reports of abuses. It is not known what kind of reports these are.
In a broadcast of Zembla, youth protectors and (former) employees of Nidos, among others, said that many things go wrong in reception locations and foster families where unaccompanied minor refugees are received.
It appears that the young people are neglected, receive too little food or are suddenly put on the street. The refugees would also end up in unsafe situations or have been mistreated. You can read more about this here.
The IGJ investigated the assistance in Apeldoorn and the surrounding area. Nidos is looking into how the situation is in the rest of the country in an internal investigation.