Fewer young people in ‘heavier’ youth care, structural investments, fewer custodial placements and less red tape. In short, that is what the government, youth care providers, client organizations and municipalities have agreed in their agreement in principle on the Youth Reform Agenda.
State Secretary Maarten van Ooijen (Youth) and Minister Franc Weerwind (Legal Protection) wrote this to the House of Representatives on Wednesday. According to the ministers, this ‘fundamental improvement in youth care’ represents ‘a major step’ towards faster and better help for children and families who need it.
One of the agreements is about amending the Youth Act. “With this we want to ensure that not all forms of help are no longer covered by youth care,” says a spokesperson. Which help will and will not be part of youth care will become clear later. “But consider, for example, exam stress training.”
The pressure on youth care is enormous, partly because such forms of help are now also covered. “By better demarcating this, we can better help children with complex requests for help,” says the spokesperson.
Strengthen district teams
In contrast to the divestment of some forms of help from youth care, the neighborhood teams in municipalities are being strengthened. Through cooperation with, among others, education, this should ensure that children and young people are supported more often with ‘collective facilities’. The parties have also agreed that paperwork and administration will be reduced ‘very drastically’, so that youth care employees spend as little time as possible on this.
“Children and parents who need help and care, as well as all people who work in youth care, must start to notice these fundamental improvements in youth care as soon as possible,” says State Secretary Van Ooijen.
The substantive agreement in principle between the organizations involved follows the agreements on the financial framework that the government and VNG reached last April after lengthy negotiations.
Stumbling block
The financial agreements have been a stumbling block for a long time, because while municipalities have been struggling with shortages in youth care for years, reforms had to yield extra savings. In the end, the government and municipalities agreed that over the next few years there will be 385 million euros less savings than planned. With this, municipalities must be ‘enabled as much as possible to improve youth care in complex social circumstances’.
According to Van Ooijen and Weerwind, the Reform Agenda for Youth, which has now been agreed with the parties involved, contains ‘a large package’ of measures to ‘improve youth care and make it financially sustainable’. The Youth Reform Agenda must be finalized before the summer.