Towards a collaborative jeugdhulp system in Renkum

Abstract

In 2015 a new child act was implemented in the Netherlands. This meant that municipalities became responsible for the organisation of all youth care. First evaluations of the youth act show that a lack of collaboration and coherence in the youth care has resulted in complaints from youth and parents concerning long waiting times, complexity in finding their way in the care, and issues in the continuity of the care (ZonMw, 2018). This project is executed in collaboration with the municipality of Renkum. Like most municipalities in the country, the municipality of Renkum has been struggling with the transitions enforced by the decentralisation. A lack of overview of, and a lack of collaboration and coherence between, the network partners in the system, prohibits the deployment of light and fitting care and instead has lead to an increased amount of referrals into expensive and heavy specialized care. In this thesis, I address the lack of collaboration and coherency between the network partners within the jeugdhulp system in Renkum and design a strategy to support the transition of the system to become more collaborative and able to offer fitting and coherent care. To embrace the complexity of the jeugdhulp and find how stakeholders- as well as the factors hindering them from collaborating- are connected, during this research I have adopted a systemic design approach. Building on insights gained through interviews with the network partners, I created a map visualizing the network partners in the jeugdhulp in Renkum and the connections between them. Drawing on living networks theory and the frame innovation method I concluded that the jeugdhulp in Renkum is currently in a state of isolation- a lot of parties are working towards the same goal, but only do so from their own island. This isolation has resulted in fragmentation of knowledge and a culture of endless referrals for the families. Although most parties in the jeugdhulp system see the value of collaboration, they seem to miss an overview of their network partners and structures for connection and collaboration lack. Currently, the municipality is working to connect the network partners, but there seems to be a lack of trust in their leadership which leads to hesitance of the network partners to commit to the collaboration. Using the frame innovation method I have explored interventions that would support the jeugdhulp transition out of a state of isolation, to a future where the network partners actively work together, share knowledge, create novelty and have the ability to grow together. The final result is a framework for the organisation of a series of events. These events- to be organised by the social team in collaboration with their network partners- are designed to support the transition towards a collaborative system by creating change on three levels: Supporting the municipality to take a facilitating leadership role Supporting network partners take ownership of the relations in the system Creating room for experimentation and innovation