With very intensive guidance, it is possible to get criminal families in Tilburg back on the right path. That requires a lot of time and attention from the family coaches: they are even available during the holidays. But then it works, usually: “Because I’m not Sjakie van Flodder, I’m not naive.”
Crime is often passed down from parent to child in families. Think, for example, of a life in the drug trade or theft. The municipality of Tilburg has been trying to turn that tide for three and a half years by personally guiding such families. And the first successful results are in.
Three coaches are now guiding about fifteen families. We speak to one who, because his work is so sensitive, only wants to talk about it anonymously.
“I found myself just putting out fires.”
The intensive approach with a family coach was new at the start and has changed little in the meantime. Nevertheless, the coach has already learned a lot. Because you can’t help all families, he now knows: “At a certain point I noticed that I was only putting out fires. Then I called the municipality to arrange things for a man who could do it himself. But he was only complaining. Then I distanced myself.”
Nevertheless, the coach goes to great lengths to help his families: “I am not your average coach. I also have contact with the families during my holidays. That’s for the sake of confidence. It’s Champions League what I do.” He is there at crucial moments in the family: when a child graduates. Or if someone has their first day at work: “I experience everything. Also the pain and the sadness. I hear the real stories.”
Being so close also makes you vulnerable and experience is therefore very important: “I now know how close I can get, what I can and cannot do.”
“A mother says: ‘It’s nice that there’s no more bullshit’.”
The coach has now been able to successfully guide five families: “In such a family, one is at work, the other goes to school and yet another is in therapy. There is no more aggression, no reports to the police and no addiction problems. And there are no more bags with money on the table. So seeing the children in the family: that’s how it can be done.”
Bringing peace back into the family, that’s the most important thing: “I hear a mother say: ‘It’s nice that there’s no more bullshit’.”
And even after a process, contact remains. “I often run into people in the city who have been part of our approach and then I have a chat: how are you? In the weekend I drop by: have a cup of coffee.”
“You will only know in ten or twenty years whether it really works.”
But did it work, is this family definitely out of crime? The criminologist, who is also present at the meeting and who supervises the process, adds nuance: “If the children from the family build up their own existence outside of crime after the training, then you can say so. But we won’t know that for another ten or twenty years. It’s too early to cheer. That is the complexity of this approach.”
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