Not youth aid but family aid

There are approximately 26,000 vulnerable families in the Netherlands who experience difficulties in multiple areas of life. In serious situations, these may include school dropout, addiction, (sexual) violence or criminal behavior and – eventually sometimes – children’s out-of-home placement. The care and assistance provided to these families has evolved enormously in recent years. Getting the right help at the right time is crucial for the most vulnerable families. Yet we see that more is needed to provide optimal support to these families to prevent problems from being passed from generation to generation.

Integral deployment of appropriate help in the family is often seen as the solution. But what is meant by integrality? The term sometimes causes more confusion than unity: everyone has their own interpretation. In our view, the most appropriate help for vulnerable families is the most far-reaching form of integrality: complete family assistance.

This takes a broad look at the family and all the help needed for all family members. In this complete form of family assistance, all parties within the Youth Act, but also the other domains within the municipalities (Wmo, Participation, Debt Assistance) and outside (Adult Mental Health and Addiction Care) are involved in the assistance around the family.

Full family support

To really properly support the most vulnerable families in society, we believe it is necessary to provide full family support getting off the ground. Full family support is in line with the need to provide help to parents as early as possible so that the core issues in the family are addressed immediately.

This is the only way to prevent problems from getting worse, eventually affecting the children or passing these problems on to the next generation. Unfortunately, we see that – with the exception of a few municipalities – the Netherlands has not yet succeeded in realizing full family support.

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Family support – publication

We set out our views in this publication on institutional challenges in family caregiving. We did this together with 10 (former) care administrators. In it, we tell how to address the problems and offer pragmatic and concrete advice on how to start realizing full family support as early as tomorrow.