Four years ago, youth care workers came to take away De Boer’s sister (29) from Nijmegen. “Because it was with my parents” The sister, fourteen years old, had been untraceable for a day out of fear and had been traumatized by the treatment of the care providers. De Boer: “That was the moment when I thought: things can’t go on like this, this is bizarre, you can’t treat my sister and my parents like this, I say stop.”
She wrote a long letter to the juvenile court judge. The family with eight children then received and, most importantly, the girl was allowed to appoint her sister Pricilla as a confidant. She became JIM, or Your Introduced Mentor, who receives support from professional care providers. “That saved my sister’s life. She was in puberty, used drugs, was impressionable and insecure, and had the wrong friends. She never said anything, she was afraid of care providers who saw her as a kind of criminal with behavioral problems. From the moment I became her mentor, the ball started rolling. For the police and care providers, I was no longer the brutal sister who was not allowed to interfere with her and had to keep her mouth shut. I was important and I was constantly told: ‘How nice that you are your sister. supports’.”
She is happy again. She is busy with the future. She is no longer that insecure girl
According to De Boer, her sister is now doing well. “She is cheerful again. She is busy with the future. She is no longer that insecure girl. She looks at you, she smiles at you. She is friendly to others. The whole family is doing better. And all I had to do was give her space, talk to her, support her. Why couldn’t all those care providers do that?”
Her story illustrates that there is a lot wrong with the current system of youth care and youth protection, but also what can be remedied with relatively simple interventions. Youth protection has been under fire for years, for example due to abuses – up to rape – in closed youth care institutions. These excesses were exposed last year by Jason Bhugwandass, who himself stayed in the crisis shelter. At the beginning of this year, the issue in Vlaardingen arose, where a girl turned out to have been neglected and severely abused by her foster parents. The trial against the foster parents starts on Thursday.
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An inspection report later showed that foster care organization Enver was to blame for many things in the Vlaardingen case, such as failing to supervise the foster parents and inadequate screening. Other agencies, including the Child Protection Council, had also made mistakes, mainly by ignoring the girl’s alarming stories or not believing her. To top it all off, a damning report was published at the end of September by (the Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate and the Justice and Security Inspectorate) on youth protection and foster care in general. There is “insufficient insight into the development and safety of young people” and that leads to “serious risks”, they write. “Too many young people do not receive protection, guidance and help, too late, or insufficiently. This remains unacceptable and must be improved.”
Tired of providing assistance
Those involved and experts are now wondering how to proceed. They seem to agree on one thing: almost every discussion about failing youth care begins and ends with the recommendation that from now on, decisions should not only be made about children, but they should be listened to themselves. But how?
According to the inspections, it is certain that there is no shortage of involvement and commitment of the youth care workers themselves, who, according to them, often do their work with heart and soul. However, in the current system, parents and children have to deal with a long series of care providers who, as in a relay race, pass the baton to each other, continually making new diagnoses, to the frustration, fear and impatience of parents and children, and of the care providers themselves.
Pricilla de Boer. “How the care providers worked has had a traumatizing effect on our family.”
Photo Mona van den Berg
The approach is not aimed at immediately combating problems in a family. Rather, the search is for the ‘story’ behind the events and . There is also support to get to know the causes of violence. Unfortunately, these experiments seem to end prematurely. Youth care institutions have withdrawn, partly because, according to them, the services are not properly organised. The Child Protection Council not only wants to cooperate during a care process, but also wants to be able to provide an independent opinion about the care provider afterwards.
With a “broad” approach, help can be deployed much more effectively, if a more in-depth look is taken at where things are going wrong within a family. One way to achieve this is to draw up a so-called ‘shared explanatory analysis’. Where youth care often comes to the rescue with a single therapy for an apparently single problem, in that case various care providers make an analysis of the family together with the parents and the child. “We are extremely enthusiastic about this,” says “Our clients also recognize themselves in what is written down, see that it is correct, and therefore do not dig their heels in.”
What do you want? Want to try parenting support again? Or is there more to it?
Too quickly, says behavioral scientist Fabienne Adriaansen of Youth Protection Brabant, care providers think they know exactly what is going on. “And they make decisions too quickly.” She herself now swears by drawing up such an explanatory analysis, which she calls “a timely step”. Adriaansen: “We visit a family when a judge has ordered a child protection measure. Previously, those families have tried everything and all kinds of care providers have come to the floor. Parents are at a loss and are tired of providing assistance. What should you do? Try parenting support again? Or is there more to it?”
She gives an example. “If a child is unruly, you can say that parents should take stricter action. And you can come up with all sorts of things for children who have outbursts of anger or are very gloomy. But what if those children live with a mother with a major personality problem, who therefore often clashes with the father, and there is a lot of fighting in the house as a result? Then the mother also has to get to work. And to figure all that out, you have to take the time.” She recently spoke to a girl who sighed that she so wished she had an older brother. Adriaansen: “I try to solve that puzzle. Together with her and her parents. Parents know their family and child and we need them to understand what is going on and what will help them. We write down the family’s story and do this transparently, and in their words, in understandable language. It is also their analysis.”
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Municipalities
Then the enormous waiting times for treatments. Too often, experts point out, the juvenile court imposes a supervision order or a guardianship measure, but youth protectors lack the options to tackle family problems. Because there is not only a shortage of staff and foster families, there is also a dire shortage of treatments and therapies. Municipalities have had to pay for youth care since the tasks were decentralized ten years ago.
They play a negative role in this, the inspectorates recently noted in their report on the deplorable state of youth protection and youth care. Because, they wrote, municipalities often question the usefulness and necessity of proposed treatments and therapies because they cost a lot of money. This state of affairs is “bizarre”, said Hans Faber, chief inspector at the Justice and Security Inspectorate, when presenting that report. “By order of the judge, certified institutions determine what kind of help should be given to the child and parents. That is their legal task. But then municipalities will once again ask themselves ‘is this necessary?’. But the costs of treatment should never be decisive in individual cases.”
Solutions are possible here too, says Mariëlle Bruning, professor of youth law at Leiden University. According to her, the “impasse” could end if juvenile courts in particular could prescribe certain therapies and treatments compulsorily. “Give the judge a bigger role.” Furthermore, municipalities should purchase youth care regionally together with other municipalities from the many thousands of youth care providers that now exist, and who make a profit mainly on light therapies. Also, she says, the decentralization of youth care should be partially “reversed”. “With regard to the more serious, mandatory assistance, such as for youth protection measures.”
Young foster care counselors
Does that mean the scandals are over? Maybe not. Because we must honestly conclude that the quality of care is simply inadequate, says Remco Oosterhoff, director of the Dutch Association for Foster Families. Oosterhoff: “What we often see is that a foster family is supervised by people in their twenties who have just completed their social work training and who also have a lot of foster families under their care at the same time. Their own foster care organization is often insufficient. Everything comes down to that one young foster care worker.”
It is said that everyone in youth care is doing their best. But you can do your best and not work effectively at the same time
Oosterhoff is shocked by what the inspectorate previously wrote about Enver, the foster care organization that was responsible for guiding the family with the abused girl in Vlaardingen. Oosterhoff: “In that report, Enver’s behavioral scientists say that they never look at the files of foster families, unless something escalates.” It literally says: “Foster care managers and behavioral scientists indicate that they do not want to adopt a controlling attitude and that maintaining the file is the responsibility of the foster care supervisor.”
Oosterhoff would like to no longer talk about yet another system change in youth protection and youth care, but about the content of the work; about what really helps children. Oosterhoff: “It is said that everyone in youth care does their best. But you can do your best at the same time and not work effectively.”
Pricilla de Boer from Nijmegen wants to shout from the rooftops how important a personal confidant is for children. “I have never denied that my sister and my parents needed help. But the way the care providers worked, for example by calling my parents intellectually disabled when they absolutely are not, has had a traumatizing effect on all of us. A counselor will not solve everything at once. But if the child has someone to whom he or she can say everything, you get to the core of the problem more quickly, the care provider has less work and it costs less money. I think that offering a mentor should be mandatory.”
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