Dutch immigration service IND said it will withdraw the licence of the country’s biggest au pair agency because it is not screening people properly.

According to Nieuwsuur, which interviewed parents who used the Nina Care agency, the girl they were matched with often had no clue about what was expected of them, or disappeared unannounced.

“On paper, they seemed experienced but in practice that would not be the case,” one parent said. Other parents spoke of au pairs drinking alcohol on the job, yelling at the children and taking away toys as punishment. One parent arrived home one day to find the au pair gone while another disappeared on holiday.

The agency promised not to place the abusive au pair with another family but the parents were then sent the profile of the same girl, Nieuwsuur said.

The girl who drank alcohol when with the child she was looking after, and lifted him by one arm “like a monkey” told the family that “if she got pregnant she wouldn’t have to go back to Uganda”.

When the family made it clear they wanted to dismiss her, she threatened to kill herself. “We felt unsafe in our own home but we couldn’t just leave her in the street. Nina Care did not come up with a solution,” the woman said. “We were told we should have taken out insurance so we could have another au pair for free.”

Jasmijn Kok, who owns Nina Care with her sister Lyla, told Nieuwsuur that “sometimes girls slip through the net.”

“If something goes wrong, the agency must act immediately and that isn’t happening,” IND spokesman Gerard Spierenburg said. Nina Care has been fined 40 times for failing in its duty of care. Half of the fines – totally €100,000 were for “serious failings” while others had to do with administrative shortcomings.

The agency blames “rapid growth” for the situation and said it would appeal against the IND’s decision. “Those days are behind us,” the sisters said.

Last year 2,310 people came to the Netherlands from outside the EU via the au pair ruling last year.