The Appropriate Education Act came into force six months earlier than the Youth Act and was also accompanied by decentralisation. Both laws require policy coordination between special education facilities and youth care. “We know that there is an interaction between how children are doing at school and at home,” explains Chaja Deen of the NJi. “As a first step, in our contribution to the Youth Monitor, we are looking at the use of special education facilities. In a follow-up, we want to establish a relationship with the use of youth care.”
Education figures show that pressure on special facilities continues to exist. However, the right figures for assessing the relationship between education and youth care are still lacking. “We cannot currently assess whether the aim of achieving coherence between education and youth care is succeeding, because the systems are too separate for that purpose. This makes clear to us the urgency of a research programme through which we can determine common success indicators for municipalities and appropriate education partnerships.”
In its Annual Youth Monitor Report, Statistics Netherlands provides figures on the use of youth care from 2015 through 2019 and on five key indicators: household income, education, employment, crime and alcohol use.