Youth protection and foster care are substandard in the Netherlands. “Too many young people do not receive, too late, or insufficient protection, guidance and help. This remains unacceptable and needs to be better,” write two inspections after thorough investigation in a report published Thursday. There is “insufficient insight into the development and safety of young people” and that leads to “serious risks.” Inspections consider the chance ‘very small’ that situations occur such as last year with the ten -year -old girl from Vlaardingen, who had been severely abused with a foster family. But they do not rule out “that falls again that everyone thinks: this should not have happened,” said Chief Inspector Angela van der Putten of the Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate.
In the Netherlands, almost half a million young people have a form of youth care. More than forty thousand do not live at home of these young people. Almost half of them live in a foster family; Almost seven thousand children live ‘family -oriented’ elsewhere, for example in a ‘family home’ together with other children under the supervision of professionals. More than fourteen hundred young people with serious behavioral problems live in closed youth care. The Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate and the Justice and Security Inspectorate have been warning for years about the lack of good youth care. “I have a déjà vu feeling,” says Hans Faber, chief inspector at the Justice and Security Inspectorate. “Six years ago we made our concerns about the safety of children known. The bitter conclusion is that something has not really improved since then. That is bitter.” Chief Inspector Van der Putten: “This story is not new. There is still insufficient insight into the safety and development of children. The fact that this message is not new makes it all the more poignant.”
There is not enough of everything
The good news is that if children get help, it actually has an effect. Van der Putten: “There are many signals that things go wrong, but fortunately also stories that children and parents say that if there is intensive, meaningful contact and there is help, they are really helped.” According to the report, the youth care workers usually show ‘an enormous will and great involvement’ and do their work satisfactorily. “Young people and parents are positive if the youth care worker is there for them and when they feel heard. Some parents say they find their youth care worker expert, clear, respectful, understanding and thinking along.” The Netherlands must also be ‘economical’ on foster families, says Van der Putten; Children often say they are ‘very satisfied’ about the help they are offered. The bad news is that this help is often missing. There is insufficient one-on-one contact between youth care workers and the child. “The foster care employees go to the stories of the foster parents,” says Van der Putten. “And according to some foster parents, the care providers often do not even come on a home visit.” According to the inspections, the fact that youth care falls short has little to do with the attitude of the youth care workers. Chief Inspector Faber: “They try to do what is still possible. But they have to work with a system that is not working at the moment. Because there is not enough of everything.”
Not talked to the children
There is insufficient staff in youth care. As a result, children who have been placed by a judge under supervision have to wait too long for help, and they miss the guidance of the institution responsible for this. Too often, parents and children receive varying care providers, who have disappeared again after a short time. The cooperation between the various authorities, as is also apparent from the account of a father, ‘Geoffrey’ recorded by the inspections. After a fight divorce, he did not see his children for a year and a half, and then to hear that his children were able to live with him, in his new composite family. Help eventually came from a hired self -employed person. “He didn’t want to read the file,” quotes Geoffrey. “This youth protector stayed for half a year and only visited once at that time.” Geoffrey heard nothing about his replacement for ten months. Later two youth protectors came by. “I have taken the children out of school especially for this appointment, but the youth protectors did not talk to the children. There have not been talking to the children in all this time.”
Moved seven times in six months
Many children who are placed under supervision must wait irresponsibly for specialized help, from psychologists and behavioral therapists to rehab coaches. “Too bizarre” calls Chief Inspector Faber that municipalities who have to pay for this help often question the need for financial reasons. “By order of the judge, certified institutions determine what a help of child and parents should be given. That is their legal task. But then municipalities are going to ask themselves again ‘this is necessary’. I understand that these considerations are financially driven, they can be expensive processes, but the costs of treatment should never be decisive in individual cases.”
The report also speaks in the report, a girl who could no longer live at home shortly after her birth. Since her forced departure, she has worn out countless guardians and addresses at a permanent foster family at the age of thirteen. In six months she moved seven times, now she lives in a family home, with the guidance of ‘professional parents’. She recently heard that thirteen diagnoses of her were made. “There are several diagnoses in my file that are not true.”
Frustrated care providers
With all the crises in youth care, the question arises as to whether judges can occasionally refrain from imposing a measure. Sometimes waiting for help takes so long that the situation often only gets worse. Parents and children totally lose faith in the care providers, and this distrust made suitable help impossible. The care providers are frustrated. It also regularly happens that after months or years a care provider finally has a place for a child, whose problems have been worse so much in the meantime that the care provider drops out. In that context, the inspectors should think of the story of two brothers who live with their mother. One boy has psychological problems, does not get help for a long time and commits a serious offense for which he ends up in prison. His brother, ‘Jordi’, felt so bad that he no longer goes to school. Youth rehabiliters stay away for both boys, the mother recently called. Jordi: “Two weeks later we received a letter:” We do our best to look for someone as soon as possible. When asking, call the picket service. ” We do not know what the picket service is, what will be done in the meantime and when there is guidance for us again. ” Chief Inspector Van der Putten: “You see that such a child is sliding further and further.”
Sham security
Where it is further on in youth care, the inspections state, the lack of openness of the certified institutions, which must arrange care for the children. These organizations must cease to mask the existence of enormous waiting lists by talking about, for example, ‘work stocks’ and thus suggest that they can realize their legal task, have the situation ‘under control’ and still have an insight into the children. That this is not the case, they must make it clear and explicitly clear so that no “false security” is awakened.
Perhaps the biggest cause for the crisis in youth care, saying the inspections, is the “administrative impasse”; The inability of the institutions and politics to take measures, the lack of ‘strong leadership’. Chief Inspector Van der Putten: “Everyone feels powerlessness. We call on not to be based in it. You can’t accept this situation.” Chief Inspector Faber: “I have searched for a imagery. I then come to a complex family, perhaps a family in a fight divorce, in which parents constantly point to each other, as directors now do. In a complex family situation, the parents of their children keep it here among directors of youth care.
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