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Dynamo international is at the initiative and coordinates this actual platform of international solidarity for street educators.
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Newsletter
History and current situation of street work in the Netherlands
Henk Geelen - 10 February 2010Streetcornerwork in the NL developed in the 70-‘s, as part of professional youthwork, targeting on the 1%-5% marginalized or multi-problem youth, mostly in coaching and specific care/cure. Since 80-‘s also detached or outreaching youthwork developed, targeted on reaching the 15 % at-risk youngsters (CAYAR), mostly in preventive activities.
Social streetwork as a method and/or as a profession is also carried out by specific (youth)care institutions (especially in big cities) and private organisations, mostly targeted on several problem areas as homelessness, prostitution, and drug addiction. NAPYN concentrates on professional youthworkers in general.
Recent national research learned there are 2600 professional youthworkers (10-12 till 23-25)(plus an additional 1000 professional childworkers) in the NL (16 million inhabitants). I estimate that almost all of them do (some) streetwork: outreaching youthwork in the public domain, mostly neighbourhood oriented, often as an extra on youth work in youth centres or in those neighbourhoods where there are no youth centres.
Recurring issues on the target public for professional youthworkers are strongly connected with the number of youthworkers available in a certain area, the (social) problems young people in that area suffer from, and the so called problems they cause for society/in that area. Accepted is the fact that around 20% of all Dutch youngsters need support from youthworkers to develop well: they need extra support because they are overloaded, fragile, coming from families with low socio-economic status. However, research also shows that at most half of them can be reached properly. This means that the professionals are often obliged to make choices who to reach out for with what kind and amount of activities by themselves (by making target group analyses), especially when government is not clear about the goals to reach. In recent years much emphasis is laid on preventing and combating youth problems on the streets, varying from working with groups hanging around and being a nuisance for citizens in the area, till working together with the police to combat juvenile criminality (and all sorts of problems in-between).
In decentralised Netherlands professional youthwork in the NL is funded by local governments (city councils; often working together in rural areas). Youthwork is mostly part of broader welfare organisations, together with individual social workers, community workers, socio-cultural workers, etc.. These are private organisations. Specific youth care organisations are paid for by provincial governments.
Street workers are mostly trained in practice, because initial education in Social Work at vocational training centres (MBO, lower level) and universities for applied sciences (HBO, higher level, bachelor degrees) is mostly general. Some MBO- and HBO-institutions develop so called “minors” (educational modules targeted on certain specific professions within the broad domain of social work) for professional youthwork, including outreaching work and streetcornerwork. Post-university training courses (master degrees) within the official educational system are up till now not developed. National and provincial formal support institutes offer a lot of conferences, one day workshops etc. Recently some national institutes, together with Zuyd University (in my region), developed one-week “summer school” for youthworkers. A variety of little (one-person) and bigger private institutes in the free market offer specific training-courses for streetworkers. National formal supervision on their quality still does not exists.
Difficulties and issues for street workers in the NL are social exclusion, criminality, poverty, radicalism, drug abuse, school failure, youth unemployment and insufficient support for the development of our profession, both quantitative and qualitative.
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