The Netherlands’ world-leading postnatal care going through disaster, unions warn

A key pillar of Dutch maternity products and services that has ended in the Netherlands being hailed as an international chief in postnatal care is below risk, healthcare unions within the nation have warned.

The Netherlands has lengthy prided itself on its distinctive gadget of kraamzorg (maternity care), wherein a maternity care assistant involves a brand new circle of relatives’s house for 8 days after a toddler’s beginning, taking care of mom and toddler.

But on Tuesday, 5 healthcare unions are anticipated to give a manifesto and petition of just about 15,000 signatures to MPs in The Hague, caution {that a} scarcity of labour and festival from different care jobs have left the gadget going through disaster.

The petition requires a ensure of the way forward for just right kraamzorg for all moms and newborns within the Netherlands.

The unions need a devoted ministerial consultant and higher pay, together with for “waiting” time, the place care employees must be to be had in case small children are born however obtain about €11.50 (£9.80) for an eight-hour shift, sooner than tax. An ordinary contract of 130 hours a month contains 244 to 265 hours on standby, in line with the FNV business union.

“Last year there were 500 families without a maternity care assistant,” mentioned Daniëlle Verveen, a care assistant from Krommenie, close to Amsterdam. “And the expectation is that this will increase up to 2034, in just 10 years, to 37,000 families without kraamzorg.”

Marloes Kortland, from the CNV union, mentioned the kraamzorg gadget of supporting new oldsters, checking small children’ well being and serving to with difficult new child demanding situations equivalent to breastfeeding was once a one-off and deserved to be preserved.

“The Netherlands is the only country that has this care,” she mentioned. “In the countries around us, women stay for much longer in hospital but here, the care for mother and children is taken up straight away by the maternity care assistants.

“But the problem is that there is a shortage of care assistants, the work pressure is ever greater and more people are leaving.

“Kraamzorg demands a lot of flexibility from people because you never know when a baby will be born … and if you have a family yourself, it is very difficult to combine the two.”

Almost one in seven small children are born at house within the Netherlands and, at this sort of beginning, the assistant is provide along a midwife. In a medical institution or maternity unit beginning, ladies are generally discharged inside hours and the care employee then visits each day to observe mom and child. The gadget, most commonly paid for via medical health insurance, gives between 24 and 80 hours of care.

But during periods such because the summer time vacation it’s creaking on the seams, mentioned GreenLeft MP and previous midwife Elke Slagt-Tichelman.

“If there’s a peak with births in a region, it can be exhausting for the maternity care assistants to get the schedule organised, and sometimes parents get less assistance,” she mentioned.

Although important, she added, the task of maternity care assistant was once difficult and “not attractive” from a remunerative perspective. “Like taking care of the elderly, it is a really underpaid job,” she mentioned.

But Verveen – who mentioned that during 3 years she had stored a 24-hour-old girl from choking and helped 200 households – mentioned the career had a worth a ways past source of revenue.

“There is something magical about life as a maternity carer,” she mentioned. “You help a family start up a new life.”