Youth support

Organisation of youth support

Municipalities organise youth support in different ways. Many municipalities outsource the intake (care needs assessment) of families in need of help to, for example, a social community team or a youth team, instead of doing this themselves.

The municipality does not implement the support itself either, but concludes contracts with organisations approved by the government for providing this support. The youth workers who work at these organisations offer the actual support.

Duty of confidentiality

Youth workers have a duty of confidentiality, since children, young people and their parents have to be confident that everything they tell a youth worker in confidence will remain secret. Youth workers are not allowed to breach their duty of confidentiality without a good reason.

But a youth worker is allowed, for example, to pass on a number of data of a child to the municipality that are necessary for submitting the invoice for the youth support. These are, for example, the citizen service number (Dutch BSN) of the child and the number of hours of care provided to the child.

Safe at Home

Municipalities have the task of setting up a Safe at Home organisation. This can be found in Chapter 4 of the Social Support Act (Wmo 2015). The tasks of Safe at Home have also been described in this chapter.

Safe at Home is the advisory and reporting centre for domestic violence, child abuse and elder abuse. People can contact Safe at Home to obtain advice or report a possibly unsafe situation. Professionals can also make a report or obtain advice here.

In the case of a report, Safe at Home investigates whether there is violence or abuse. If so, Safe at Home may transfer the case to, for example, a social community team or the Child Care and Protection Board.

The privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), applies to the processing of personal data by Safe at Home. Additional specific rules have been included in Chapter 5 of the Wmo 2015.

Reporting at Safe at Home

A report to Safe at Home about a child can be made by:

• a private individual, such as a relative, an acquaintance or a bystander;
• a professional, such as a teacher, a GP or a police officer.

Permission from the parent(s) of the child is not necessary for making a report and passing on information about the child and the family situation to Safe at Home. But this is only allowed if it is necessary for:

• stopping domestic violence and/or child abuse;
• investigating a reasonable suspicion of domestic violence and/or child abuse.

The rules for this can be found in the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse (Obligatory Reporting Code) Decree and in Chapter 5 of the Wmo 2015.

A GP has a duty of confidentiality, but also a duty to report. This can be found in the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse (Obligatory Reporting Code) Decree and in Article 5.2.6 of the Wmo 2015.

Information about report

Has a report been made about a child? Then the parents are in principle entitled to information about this.

• Is the person reporting a private individual? Then Safe at Home may inform the parents about who made the report if the person reporting has given permission for this in advance.
• Is the person reporting a professional? Then the starting point is that this person personally informs the parent(s) of his/her intention to make a report. This can be found in the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse (Obligatory Reporting Code) Decree. The professional does not have to inform the parent(s) if this may pose a threat to the child or to the professional themselves. In that case, the professional can also ask Safe at Home not to inform the parent(s).

Chapter 5 of the Wmo 2015 and the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse (Obligatory Reporting Code) Decree contain rules about Safe at Home's obligation to provide information and the exceptions to these rules.