A second baby has been left with a special charity that allows mothers to give up a child in secret, reports the AD.

The Stichting Beschermde Wieg – or ‘protected cradle foundation’ –set up five locations where babies can be left safely with volunteers in 2014.

At the beginning of September, the AD reports, a woman gave her son up to the charity’s volunteers, having called its emergency phone lines when her contractions started.

‘We immediately took action,’ charity founder Barbara Muller told the AD. ‘She gave birth in a safe place, under the supervision of a midwife. The mother and baby are doing well.’

The baby has been placed with a crisis foster family, and the mother has left her details behind in a sealed envelope with a lawyer so the child, at 16, can discover her identity.

But the so-called ‘foundling rooms’ in Papendrecht, Groningen, Middelburg, Oudenbosch and Zwolle have been criticised by the Dutch child protection council. The first child was left there in Groningen in May 2016, although it is illegal to abandon a child in the Netherlands