Ministry of VROM
Ten million euros for immigrant youth policy
04-07-2008The Cabinet has approved the proposals put forward by Minister Rouvoet (Youth and the Family) and Minister Vogelaar (Housing, Communities and Integration) in a document entitled “Diversity in Youth Policy”. The proposals, which will now be sent to the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament, involve the investment of ten million euros over the coming three years in measures to enable youth workers to reach immigrant young people and their parents at an earlier stage and with greater effect.
As far as possible, the government wants to avoid situations where contact is not made until problems have already arisen. In order to achieve this aim, youth welfare and youth health care will be made ‘diversity-proof’, which means that there will be a greater focus on dealing with other cultures in the training given to youth workers. Youth welfare and youth health care organisations will also aim to recruit more employees and volunteers from a range of cultural backgrounds. Youth workers, immigrants and municipal authorities have also indicated that easy-to-approach initiatives such as fathers for the neighbourhood, mothers who supervise children during school lunch breaks, homework coaches and child mentors are all good ways of reaching out to immigrant young people and their parents.
“Diversity in Youth Policy” is a supplement to current measures and policy initiatives and reflects the government’s view that all opportunities must be open to every child. This is unfortunately not always the case at the moment, because some immigrant young people do not get every chance to grow up well and healthy. For example, the number of immigrant young people that become involved in criminal activities is higher than average; young immigrants are also overrepresented in youth welfare institutions.
The ten million euros will be used in part to set up three regional ‘academic work centres’, which are centres where youth workers, young people’s and immigrants’ organisations, municipalities, universities of applied sciences, research universities and a multi-ethnic coaching team all work together on practical and academically sound approaches to tackling youth problems. The approaches are based on the strength and responsibility of the immigrant children and parents who are involved in the campaigns. The experience gained in the work centres will be available for deployment across the country and will be further enhanced by the knowledge acquired.