Why make things difficult when we can do them TOGETHER?
Speakers: Bram Lemmens, Linda Zijlmans
A glimpse into ...
To properly support young people with requests for help in their development, good cooperation between education and youth care is essential. This requires a shared vision and a shared sense of urgency and trust, with everyone’s role, tasks and responsibilities clearly defined. Interprofessional cooperation between teachers and youth care professionals is crucial in this regard. A method in which interprofessional cooperation is central is IZEO (Integrated Care and Education, Alterius). IZEO is based within four youth care organisations in Limburg, including Gastenhof (Koraal). IZEO is unique within education and youth care because it focuses on working towards a developmental perspective, provides accommodation for care and education, and embeds treatment in young people’s daily programme. Youth care professionals and teachers work closely together. In this best practice, interprofessional cooperation (education–youth care) is firmly established. Young people and their parents are closely involved in day treatment, intensive home treatment and residential care.
Trauma-sensitive working together
Speaker: Jenneke Bleijenburg
A glimpse into ...
Jenneke Bleijenburg is a lecturer at the Jeugdformaat academy specialising in early childhood psychological trauma. She worked in education and youth care herself. As a therapeutic educator, she lived together with 3 to 4 children and young people (aged 3–20) with early childhood trauma.
What is trauma?
Trauma refers to distressing experiences such as war, sexual abuse or domestic violence. When there has been too much insecurity and stress in early childhood, and too little recovery and reassurance, early childhood trauma can hinder and disrupt a child’s development. How do you notice that something is wrong? The stress system in the brain of a traumatised child is constantly active. Chronic stress impedes learning: emotionally, socially and cognitively. Sometimes we notice that a child is noticeably tense, down or tired, even when nothing is happening at that moment. However, trauma is not always clearly noticeable.
What can you do together?
Every child needs an inner sense of safety in order to develop to their full potential. Safe adults can help with this. For example, they recognise the stress of a child in disruptive, unusual or counterintuitive behaviour and respond to it with a trauma-sensitive approach aimed at protecting and calming the child during or after a difficult moment.
How do you work together around the child?
If all the adults around the child take themselves and each other seriously, trust one another and dare to learn from one another, and if they also succeed in showing this to the children, they create a world in which even children with early childhood trauma can experience safety.
Many North Holland shoulders support A Home for Noordje
Speakers: Christine Pollmann, Chantal van Liefland
A glimpse into ...
The nine youth care regions, the secondary education partnerships, the major youth care providers, the certified institutions, experts by experience and the North Holland Supra-Regional Expertise Network are joining forces in this supra-regional network collaboration. Their ambition is for all young people in North Holland to grow up at home, or as close to home as possible. If this is not possible in a foster family or family home because some young people have problems that are too complex, unconditional accommodation is made possible in small-scale residential facilities, as close by as possible. And with education as the first priority. The focus is on as normal a life as possible, with free time and friends. With appropriate support, including tailored support for professional caregivers. The most important principle is that we want—and must—stop moving young people who need youth care out of their homes and schools. And how do you do that? Alongside commitment to that goal, working according to this principle and creating the necessary conditions, a few other things are needed. This can only be done together. It requires slowing down, tolerating uncertainty, and listening, observing and analysing very carefully. Using words that everyone understands and that lead to a supported and shared understanding. Sometimes complex, incomprehensible behaviour has multiple causes, not all of which are equally visible or clear. So that commitment also means adding the necessary expertise to the environment in which the young person is located. This makes it possible to achieve the goal. Sometimes this requires solutions that are not naturally customary, but are humane. Working across boundaries, in the interests of young people. Together, we are becoming increasingly specific about possible solutions and involving more and more people in this movement. Will you join us too? We especially invite you to get involved.
Click here for part 1.
Click here for part 2.
Click here for part 3.