Youth care use in the Netherlands falls for first time in years

A total of 477,000 young people received youth care last year, a decline of 2.8% compared with the year before, a decline of 2.8% compared with the year before, according to Statistics Netherlands. Excluding the pandemic year 2020, this marks the first decrease since 2015, when municipalities took over responsibility for youth care and Statistics Netherlands began tracking the figures. The drop was mainly seen in youth assistance and youth protection, while youth probation services showed an increase.

In 2025, around 10.8% of young people in the Netherlands under the age of 23 received youth care. This care is split into three main categories: youth assistance, youth protection, and youth probation.

Youth assistance is the most frequently used form and supports issues such as mental health or parenting difficulties. Youth protection is applied when a child’s safety is under threat, while youth probation is aimed at young people who have had contact with the police or education authorities due to truancy.

In 2025, almost 33,000 young people were placed under youth protection, marking a 3.3% decline compared with the previous year. By contrast, youth probation rose to nearly 9,000 cases, an increase of 4.5%.

Youth assistance was most commonly provided to teenagers aged 12 to 18, and slightly more often to girls than boys. In contrast, among younger children, boys are more likely than girls to receive support. Young people aged 18 and older account for a relatively small share, at 3.2%.

General practitioners referred almost 97,000 young people to youth care, making up 33.5% of all cases. This is a decline from 38% in 2021. Meanwhile, municipalities’ share of referrals rose to 33.3%. This shift means local governments now play a larger coordinating role in youth care, which in turn has led to significant differences in how youth care is used across municipalities.

Minister of Public Health Mirjam Sterk calls the decline an encouraging signal. “At the same time, we need to carefully examine how these figures relate to the accessibility and quality of care and the costs,” the minister said.

She also said she is continuing to work with, among others, care providers and municipalities to organise more support for families in the future and to ensure specialist care is only used when it is truly necessary.