Abstract
Mental health is integral to personal and social health and wellbeing and impacts on psychological, emotional and
social development throughout the lifespan. Mental health is especially important for children and adolescents as
it affects their educational, relationship, physical health, and adult functioning. Youth-care and child-protection
services are frequently involved in supporting and protecting vulnerable children when they experience
psychological stress, family strife, abuse, and/or neglect, or when they live in a socially unstable environment.
But the success of these systems is dependent on not only the provision of services, but on professional
accountability, evidence-based decision making, recognizing family rights and having effective processes for
challenging decisions.
Youth care and child protection in the Netherlands is provided in a multi-layered institutional system where social
workers, mental-health professionals, municipalities, certified child-protection organisations (Gecertificeerde
Instellingen), the Child Protection Board (Raad voor de Kinderbescherming) and the courts play a role. Since the
decentralisation introduced by the Youth Act of 2015, municipalities are primarily responsible to organise youth
care and certified institutions are responsible for carrying out compulsory care measures, like supervision orders
(ondertoezichtstelling) ordered by a judge. These institutions have a lot of power; they can have children
supervised, limits on parental access, or the child removed from the home. The process that leads to decisions, the
evidence on which they are based and the means of contesting them are legitimate issues of public concern because
they may have long-term effects on children and parents.
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