The guideline that ensures that out-of-home children can sometimes not return to their biological parents after six months. Youth professionals have applied the guideline that applied until now ‘too strictly’.
This is reported by the Netherlands Youth Institute (NJI), which, together with professional associations, is responsible for the guideline for the return of children to their biological parents. For the youngest children, after six months, they are so attached to their new place of residence, for example with foster parents, that their future lay there. For older children, from the age of five, the term is one year.
that by many criticized acceptable term for return is now off the table. A new guideline must follow before the summer. Until then, decisions must ‘do justice to the specific situation of the child and the family’. It is remarkable that it is also stated that youth professionals have applied the guideline that applied until now ‘too strict’ in practice. The directive also gave rise to this. ‘We can imagine that the firm wording of the relevant passages in the guideline could lead to a misinterpretation.’
Question
This raises the question of what that means for parents who have seen their child disappear from their lives after applying that guideline in the past. The alarm was raised earlier in this newspaper, because the crisis in youth care also ensures that during the expiry of that period it was not always possible to offer appropriate help to biological parents. For example, within the already tight deadlines, it is not possible at all to create the conditions that make return possible. Professor Mariëlle Bruning called this perhaps the ‘most distressing’ thing about the inability to offer vulnerable children the right help: “Biological parents have not had a fair chance, simply because the right help is lacking.”
There is another group that will find hope in going overboard with the directive. Benefit parents whose children were recently placed out of their homes have seen precious time ticking away in recent months as their children become increasingly attached to their new home. The directive also threatened to hinder the reunification of their families.
happiness
We are therefore pleased that the directive is now being tabled. Lawyers Mieke Krol and Richard Korver have both argued for a long time in their cases that there is no generally acceptable term, but that judges should judge per child. “The authors of the directive themselves indicate that their deadlines should not be taken strictly and certainly not in general. Unfortunately, that has happened in recent years.”
The lawyers hope that the reflection promised by the judiciary will also lead to improvement quickly. Family judges are currently looking at the way in which they administer justice in family supervision orders and custodial placements. In the Netherlands, the number of children placed out of home is around 45,000, while all parties believe that this number should be reduced.
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