The number of young people using youth care must have fallen from one in seven to a maximum of one in ten in two years. That is the ambition of outgoing State Secretary Judith Tielen (Youth, Prevention and Sport, VVD). “We want to turn the tide and do everything we can,” she writes in a letter to the House of Representatives.
A package of measures should lead to a decrease in specialist, individual youth care. Municipalities will have “strong local” neighborhood teams that offer young people and their parents accessible help, such as educational support. Young people also benefit from group discussions at school or at an association, as research shows that “mental well-being does not have to be solved individually.” The neighborhood teams will also be given a “more authoritative position” in determining whether, and if so, which other form of youth care is needed for young people. Last year, two inspections criticized the power of municipalities; they would too often ignore advice on required youth care from legally competent authorities for financial reasons.
According to Tielen, municipalities must from now on ‘more explicitly involve’ the ‘scarcity of people and resources’ when ‘purchasing and organizing’ youth care. The average duration of youth care for young people living at home, the State Secretary reports, has increased by 36 percent between 2015 and 2024, from an average of 297 days to 403 days.
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Help to families
Assistance to young people must also be accompanied by assistance to the family where they reside, the State Secretary believes; many children who receive youth care have parents with mental problems. “Targeting parents is then more effective.” Moreover, these families often have to deal with unemployment, financial worries, poor housing, parenting and health problems, addictions and insecurity. This does not so much require youth care but “help aimed directly at the parents or situation”. To this end, the government wants to develop a ‘social agenda of the Netherlands’ together with municipalities.
Tielen also wants to improve the quality of youth care, such as by “strengthening the craftsmanship and fundamental attitude of professionals” and using “informal support” for families. She also talks about using a “joint explanatory analysis” before taking measures such as out-of-home placement, in which parents and care providers jointly identify what the most important problems are.
The question is whether the new cabinet to be formed will adopt the proposals. In any case, Tielen wants to work on a “cultural change”, she says: “less problematizing, help closer to families and using specialist youth care only when it is really necessary and effective.”
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