Changes in the way healthcare and other care services are organised will lead to the sector losing 20,000 jobs this year, the state benefit agency UWV says.

Some 20,000 care sector jobs also went last year, the UWV says. Care of the elderly, home helps, youth care and handicapped services will be hardest hit by the new round of redundancies.

The number of healthcare jobs in the Netherlands has grown for the past 40 years. ‘This jobs motor has stopped and the healthcare sector has switched from growth to contraction,’ spokesman Rob Witjes told television current affairs show Nieuwsuur.

The government is transferring responsibility for non-residential care services to local councils in 2015. This will be coupled with spending cuts and a policy of ensuring people stay in their own homes as long as possible, with friends and family as back-up.

Some 1.1 million people currently work in the care sector.