If you are wondering what is wrong with youth care in the Netherlands, one look at the figures will suffice. In 1997 1 in 27 children called on professional help, now it is 1 in 7. That is 13 percent of all young people, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Spending rose from 3.6 billion euros in 2015 to 5.6 billion today.
Unless the diagnosis is that in 1997 an entire generation grew up in total neglect – and nobody makes that diagnosis – the conclusion can only be that something has gone wrong with the system.
An optimist might maintain that the decentralization of youth care by the second Rutte cabinet has been a great success. The idea was that municipalities would be much better able to find youth with problems. That has indeed worked.
Unfortunately, this is partly the result of the enormously expanded circuit of (semi-)professional youth care workers who have found easy access to municipalities. It often concerns minor youth care, the effect of which in many cases cannot be demonstrated, but which does clog the system to such an extent that enormous waiting lists have been created for really complex and urgent cases.
In addition, the bureaucracy has increased uncontrollably as a result of the half-hearted decentralization of 2015. The municipalities were given the tasks, but the plan to force them to intensive cooperation in five parts of the country soon lapsed. The youth care institutions are among the victims, because they now have to do business separately with all those municipalities, which all use their own types of accounts, payment codes and accountability methods. Administrative costs had already increased by more than 10 percent in 2016. The number of bookkeepers grew explosively, at the expense of the number of aid workers.
Four months after taking office, the new State Secretary Van Ooijen is now also making that diagnosis. Youth care is part of the ever-growing list of ‘major Rutte II reforms’ that two cabinets later prove untenable. The unproven aid methods are eliminated, if it is up to Van Ooijen. And municipalities are still forced to cooperate in their contacts with care institutions.
This is going in the right direction, although all the studies and studies that he announces into exactly how this should be done are not entirely reassuring. Certainly not because it is already five years too late.
The position of the newspaper is expressed in the Volkskrant Commentaar. It is created after a discussion between the commentators and the editor-in-chief.