Voorzorg in Nederland: Ontwikkelingen in de maatschappelijke omgang met kindermishandeling, verkeersonveiligheid en genetische modificatie

De ervaring van gevaar en schade is universeel. Natuurgeweld, menselijk geweld, ziekten en ongelukken vormen in de geschiedenis van de mensheid een constante. De aard en de sc

Inquiries into Fatal Child Abuse in the Netherlands

In some Western societies, inquiries into fatal abuse of children known to agencies are nowadays a common phenomenon. They have been carried out in the UK for many years, but have recently also emerged in the Netherlands. The main aim of these inquiries is to improve child welfare and protection practice in order to reduce the chance of further child deaths. However, there is reason to critically consider the feasibility of this aim, as British research into child death investigations suggests that they have hardly worked and even may have had counter productive consequences. This paper examines for the first time all Dutch public inquiry reports into child abuse fatalities. It is shown that the problems highlighted in the reports are highly similar to those recurring in their British counterparts. Furthermore, there are considerable similarities between Dutch and British investigations regarding the solutions they propose. Like British inquiries and reviews, Dutch inquiries largely focus on changing procedures, introducing decision-making instruments and increasing monitoring. This one-sided emphasis on bureaucratic measures, the paper argues, does not rate the human side of child protection work at its true value, and makes it questionable whether the inquiries will contribute to improving practice

Interprofessional teamwork in decentralized child welfare in The Netherlands

The recent transformation of child welfare in the Netherlands has improved opportunities for interprofessional working. We compared two models of teamworking within newly established interprofessional teams in the cities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, conducting a secondary analysis of semi-structured interviews collected through three broader research projects. Respondents include seventeen interprofessional team members (six from Utrecht, eleven from Amsterdam), representing a variety of teams across city, as well as two policymakers from Utrecht and one from Amsterdam. Team members were approached using convenience sampling, policymakers were purposively recruited. In different rounds of open and focused coding, we found that differences in team organization between the two cities have led to differences in the quality of interprofessional teamworking. Teamworking is best developed in Utrecht partly because team members are recruited and employed by a single organization. This has enabled a more careful process of selection and team composition than in Amsterdam, where a delegation approach entailed fragmentation as well as the risk of divided loyalty between team and mother organization. In addition, while the development of interprofessional teamwork in Utrecht is served by certain structures, teams in Amsterdam have suffered from an imbalance between freedom and structure, causing insecurity amongst staff and reduced chances of interprofessional integration. Despite the apparent success of the Utrecht model of interprofessional teamworking, interprofessional collaboration across team boundaries might suffer from the fact that teams in Utrecht, unlike in Amsterdam, do not comprise representatives of relevant partner organizations