There could be a serious shortage of reception places for unaccompanied minors, according to data from the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) and the organization Nidos. The COA places young people in facilities with a size of 50 to 100 when their asylum application is still pending and says nearly 2400 more places will be needed this year as Nidos houses them in houses if they are allowed to stay in the countries bass; the foundation needs another 2,300 posts, NOS says.
In total, almost 4,700 more places are needed for these young people this year, almost 1.5 times the number of places this group currently has: in the provinces of North Holland and Zuid Holland in particular, the work is still great.
Last year, 4,200 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in the Netherlands, double the number in 2021. The Ministry of Justice expects around 5,000 applications this year. Last year, 80 percent of this group had a very good chance of achieving the status, the COA director tells NOS.
According to the director, the negative image of young asylum seekers remains particularly widespread in the Netherlands.
About half of young people without status stay in a temporary place, which is often not suitable for them, social workers say: in hotels they are alone in a room and there are no spaces for common activities. Sometimes they stay on a site near a regular applicant center kindergarten (azc) or in another place where they are often with adults. In these places there is less supervision and less psychological counseling.
Health psychologist Sliedrecht tells NOS: “If Dutch parents treated children the way these young people were treated – by letting them sleep in a chair at night, giving them insufficient food or drink, then moving them from place to place and from one school to another – then he would be considered an abused child and the social structures would intervene”.