Youth care inspectors have started an investigation into the foster care of underage refugees following allegations of abuse made by current affairs programme Zembla which will air on Sunday.

The alleged abuse ranges from neglect through lack of food to physical abuse and some children were also turned out in the streets, the programme found,

The care of the minors who have a residency permit is in the hands of the national youth protection organisation Nidos, which had itself expressed concern about the suitability of 40% of foster families. Zembla had access to the internal document which dates from July 2023.

The programme interviewed some 40 coaches, teachers and (former) Nidos staff who said screening procedures at the organisation were inadequate. A lack of staff also made it impossible to manage heavy caseloads, they said.

Staff members said children had been placed with families that were known to be unsuitable and that some were sent into an environment where there was scabies. “A family that would never have been seen as suitable for a Dutch child was deemed good enough by Nidos,” one of the interviewees told the programme.

Another child was injured during a police raid at the home of a family suspected of drug peddling. Reports of abuse were not always picked up and children were allowed to remain with families because of the lack of foster places.

Professor of juvenile law Mariëlle Bruining, one of the experts interviewed for the programme, said any sign of unsafe situations should be taken seriously and the children should be removed.

Nidos was also involved in the horrific abuse of a young Vlaardingen girl by her foster carers, who had earlier also abused two young Syrian refugees.

Whistleblowers said young refugees are also at risk when staying in asylum centres or emergency accommodation, including locations where criminal activity took place.

Missing girls

“Girls would go missing from the locations,” one youth worker said. “There were suspicions of people trafficking but nothing was done about it. Some would return with a black eye. Some drank bleach out of desperation. There were unwanted pregnancies, it was too bad for words,” he said.

Nidos has now said it will start an investigation of its own and talk to every refugee in a foster family in the next few weeks. “Nidos will of course do what is necessary if the investigations show that alternative action is required,” the organisation said.

Last year, journalism collective Lost In Europe found that over 50,000 young refugees had disappeared from refugee centres across Europe in the space of three years, In 2023, 360 youngsters in the Netherlands went missing, most of them from the refugee reception centre in Ter Apel.