NOS News•today, 03:21
Last year, approximately 474,000 Dutch young people received one or more forms of youth care, approximately 1 in 9 young people up to 23 years old. That is an increase of 10,000 young people since 2021, reports the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), or an increase of 2.2 percent.
According to Statistics Netherlands, the increase is mainly explained by the fact that more teenage girls aged 12 to 18 received help, especially help in the lighter category ‘youth help without accommodation’. This is help with psychological or behavioral problems where the young person continues to live at home and attends individual therapy sessions or group sessions. Last year, almost 18 percent of teenage girls received this form of help.
Boys of primary school age receive this form of youth care even more often: approximately 22 percent of boys between 8 and 12 years old, a percentage that has remained stable over the past three years.
By far the largest group of young people in youth care use such youth care without accommodation: 447,000 people, or 94 percent of the total.
Fewer admissions and guardianships
Although the total number of young people in youth care increased, Statistics Netherlands reports that there was a decline in the more drastic categories of care: the number of young people in youth care with residence (admission to a foster family or care institution) decreased by 5 percent, the number of supervision orders (where the authority of the parents is limited) decreased by 15 percent. The number of guardianships (where parental authority is taken away) also fell by 10 percent. Statistics Netherlands does not report what causes these declines.
According to CBS, it is striking that the number of young people in youth care varies enormously within the Netherlands, from more than 15 percent of young people in Tiel and Veendam to less than 6 percent in Schiedam, Maassluis and Raalte, among others. According to Statistics Netherlands, this may be due to socio-economic differences between municipalities, but also because each municipality organizes youth care differently.
