This summer, parents who are victims of the childcare benefits scandal can go to a new desk. There they should receive “generous” help, but the ministry is still in doubt about who is entitled to this.
“Everyone is of course welcome to come,” says the spokesperson for State Secretary Sandra Palmen (Allowances). But the ministry is struggling with whether it can be explained to the Netherlands that parents with little damage can claim even more compensation.
On the one hand, the ministry does not want to “create false expectations” for aggrieved parents who had to repay a relatively low amount to the government unfairly. “At the same time, customization must be possible.”
To understand these doubts, it is good to go back to the beginning of the recovery operation. When a parent is recognized as a victim by the government, they are always entitled to 30,000 euros according to the Catshuis arrangement. Furthermore, debts are forgiven and the children from the family are entitled to an amount. “Added together, this can be as much as 60,000 euros,” says the spokesperson.
This is intended for the 40,000 parents who were wrongly designated as fraudsters by the Tax and Customs Administration between 2005 and 2019. They had to repay childcare allowance, amounting to tens of thousands of euros. This is called the financial damage.
Loss of job and house
The consequences have accumulated for those people for years: they sold their jewelry and their house, took their children out of childcare so they could not work and lived with a lot of stress. In the worst case, the problems piled up at home and children were placed out of the house.
Parents will soon be able to receive a fixed amount of compensation for various setbacks, except for complex situations. But parents with low financial damage have already been helped generously, the Van Dam committee concluded earlier this year.
Of the 40,000 aggrieved parents, 40 percent have suffered more than 30,000 euros in financial damage due to the childcare benefits scandal. That is the amount that the government wrongly collected from them. The ministry finds it plausible that this group has additional damage, such as the loss of a house. The government must work more generously for them, the Van Dam committee believes.
For 30 percent of the parents, the government reclaimed less than 5,000 euros. They have received 30,000 euros for this through the aforementioned Catshuis arrangement. That is therefore 25,000 euros more than the amount of the claim.
Receipts or trust
The question Palmen is struggling with is whether these parents will be welcome at the new desk. Parents do not have to provide hard evidence there, although their story must be plausible in relation to the childcare benefits scandal.
It is possible that victims with low financial damage will soon have to provide extra evidence, while Palmen wanted to put an end to the checks of receipts by her civil servants. That can be slow and she wants to complete this recovery operation by the end of 2027. Another possibility is that parents with less than 30,000 euros in financial damage cannot in principle go to the desk.
At the moment, only two thousand people have been helped. The ministry estimates that about twenty thousand people are eligible for additional compensation for damages. Stichting Gelijkwaardig Herstel (SGH) has assisted approximately one thousand people and looks at this very differently.
The foundation helps parents out of trust with a damage injury expert and receives a lot of appreciation for that. During a pilot, victims could go to SGH, regardless of the amount of their Integral Assessment.
‘Thinking from distrust’
“The amount of unlawfully collected amounts by the ministry says nothing about the suffering and injury that parents have suffered,” says a spokesperson for SGH. The foundation sees that the wrongful claims have caused “a domino effect” of misery.
“Everyone who has unfairly been given the stamp of fraudster has suffered consequential damage, sometimes even across generations,” says the spokesperson. If it is up to SGH, all victims are welcome. “Thinking from distrust must stop,” says the spokesperson. “This concerns recognized innocent people. They just want to be seen, heard and recognized.”
That puts them in a different game than the ministry. There, question marks are raised when someone, for example, had to repay 2,000 euros and would have had to sell a house as a result. “How plausible is that?” says Palmen’s spokesperson. “If someone claims a ton in damages, it’s not strange that we take a look to see if there is a supporting piece with it.”
Palmen will come with more information about the progress of the recovery operation before the summer recess.