The reception of asylum children still does not meet the minimum quality standards and this jeopardizes their safety and development. This is the joint conclusion of four inspectorates in a letter to State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum).
According to the inspectorates, the minister must intervene quickly, because access to education and continuity of care, among other things, are still not self-evident.
It is the first time that the Justice and Security Inspectorate, the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate, the Education Inspectorate and the Dutch Labor Inspectorate jointly express an opinion on the situation of asylum children. In the past year, individual inspections have already sounded the alarm.
The four supervisors see that, since the first fire letter about a year ago, the situation for asylum children has not improved. Four emergency shelters and nine crisis emergency shelter locations were visited for the study. It is not known whether the Expo Hall in Assen, for example, was among them. The inspectors also visited the COA reception location for unaccompanied minors (amv’ers) in Ter Apel.
One of the problems is that due to the poor throughput, children often stay in such a crisis emergency reception center much longer than is actually intended. The inspections also “still see no concrete prospect of sustainable improvement of the situation in the short term”. Moreover, asylum children should not be treated differently from children who have fled from Ukraine, the inspectorates write.
In addition to State Secretary Van der Burg, the letter is addressed to Minister of Education Dennis Wiersma, State Secretary Maarten van Ooijen (Public Health) and Minister of Social Affairs Karien van Gennip.