CBS corrects sentences about the role of youth protection in benefits scandal | Interior

Jan 30, 2023 at 10:30 PMUpdate: 13 minutes ago

After much criticism, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) amended two sentences on Monday in a news item about the connection between custodial placements and the benefits scandal.

In the news item accompanying the report Youth protection and the allowance affair, Statistics Netherlands uses the headline: “Benefit affair has not increased the chance of a child protection measure”. That text was used by many media, including NU.nl, in their own reporting.

The headline has now changed to “No evidence that benefits affair has led to more child protection measures on average”.

In the summary of the report, Statistics Netherlands wrote the sentence “Duped does not increase the chance of child protection measures” as an intermediate heading. That sentence has also been amended to “No evidence found that duping on average led to more child protection measures”.

CBS received a lot of criticism for the first way of writing, because no distinction was made between light and heavy involvement of youth services. As a result, no such conclusion could be drawn about the relationship between benefits problems and custodial placements.

According to experts, the conclusion that benefit parents were not hit harder than other parents should never have been drawn by Statistics Netherlands.

The headline and a subheading of the news item about the report have been “aligned with the conclusions of the investigation,” a CBS spokesman told NRC. The agency emphasizes that the content and conclusions of the report have not been changed.

Source