At this moment, vulnerable children and parents still often have to wait too long for youth care. And that is not the intention. Especially the most vulnerable children who need (high) specialist youth assistance, such as help with complex addiction problems or in a crisis situation. These children must be able to rely on the government for help. The legislative proposal Improvement of availability of youth care, which was adopted today by the House of Representatives, is an important step towards better availability of this (high) specialist youth care. The legislative proposal is part of the Youth Reform Agenda, which includes further measures.

State Secretary Karremans (Youth, Prevention and Sport): “The pressure on youth care is high, but it cannot be the case that children and families in the most vulnerable situations do not always receive the right care on time. This law must bring about change. Good news that the House of Representatives has adopted the legislative proposal. I hope we can discuss this quickly in the Senate.”

(High) specialist care is not always well procured, as it is expensive and complex care. This is because only a relatively small group of children needs this youth care. The knowledge is so specific that often only a few parties in the Netherlands offer this. For this reason, municipalities have been collaborating regionally for years, but this regional cooperation varies greatly, including in what is procured. As a result, it is not always clearly visible at the national level where vulnerabilities lie.

This legislative proposal requires municipalities to cooperate with other municipalities in the region when procuring (high) specialist youth care and prescribes what must be procured jointly at the regional level. This will make this care for rare and complex problems more widely available throughout the Netherlands and give us better insight into the availability of care.

The law also ensures that municipalities and care organizations spend less time on administration. By collaborating regionally, savings are made on administration for both the municipality and the provider. This leaves more time to actually help children. Additionally, the law serves as a basis for working more uniformly by, for example, registering in the same way everywhere. This will result in more comparable data, such as on waiting times. With this data, regions can be compared better and it will become clearer where things are not going well in youth care.

Furthermore, we see that youth care providers often do not have their financial operations in order. This can have negative consequences for the availability of youth care. The legislative proposal sets requirements for the financial administration of care providers. This ensures more certainty for youth care, now and in the future.

Finally, the tasks of the current Youth Authority are laid down in the law and become part of the Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa). The NZa will also have a new task in the availability of this specialist youth care. It will have the task of identifying risks early based on better comparable data so that municipalities and providers can take timely measures.