Domestic abuse watchdog Veilig Thuis says it is concerned about the low number of reports it receives from neonatal care workers.

Just 350 of the 130,000 complaints last year came from nurses or post-maternity carers, even though their job requires to flag up concerns about abuse, neglect or families who are struggling to cope.

A survey of 1,000 care workers carried out by Kenniscentrum Kraamzorg found that one in four had seen indications of child neglect, domestic violence or abuse, but 55% of them had not reported them.

Nursing organisations said many professionals were worried about reprisals from families if they were reported to the authorities.

“We’ve had people threaten to burn the practice down after we said we had concerns and wanted to report them,” nurse Nasim Yadegari told Nieuwsuur.

Another concern is that care workers are not spending enough time with families because of staff shortages. Neonatal nurses are supposed to spend six hours a day with families of newborn babies, but they are often forced to cut back to the minimum of three hours.

“People can keep up appearances for three hours, but if you are there for six to eight hours, the mask slips,” one nurse said.

Janneke Witte, who deals with incoming reports in her role as liaison doctor at Veilig Thuis, said early intervention was crucial to protect children who are at risk of abuse, but care professionals were often reluctant to report potential cases.

“If unsafe situations aren’t reported, we often see things go badly wrong later in life,” she told Nieuwsuur.

She cited one case of a newborn baby whose erratic behaviour turned out to be caused by the mother’s drug use, which was discovered after the care worker raised their concerns with a nurse.

“The nurse had the child taken to hospital, which found traces of cocaine in the child’s urine. So the mother was using cocaine at the same time as she was breastfeeding,” Witte said.