Youth Aid

The municipality can provide you or your child with general assistance. You can get this general help directly. The municipality can also offer you or your child specific help. For specific help, you must make an application using the form provided by the municipality.

The municipality offers the following forms of youth assistance: 

Personal care

For children up to age 18 who cannot care for themselves or cannot care for themselves adequately. For example, at the:

• washing, brushing teeth and shaving
• dressing and undressing or fitting prostheses
• eating and drinking or taking medication
• going to the toilet (putting on a urinal, changing incontinence materials)
• changing lying or sitting positions

Someone else then does this for them. Whenever possible, your child learns to do this themselves.

Guidance

For children up to 18 years of age who cannot cope with their disability or condition, or cannot cope adequately. The goal is for your child to become as independent as possible with individual or group counseling.The guidance can also focus on the other family members. Or on daily travel to day care. Guidance is often part of a youth assistance package.

Residence in an institution

For children up to age 18 with a disability, condition or disorder. The municipality arranges temporary help and Health in an institution. The institution is a protected living environment where there is always supervision. 

Requirements counseling or residence in an institution

Your child may be eligible for counseling or institutionalization when:

• problems growing up or parenting
• a (mild) intellectual disability
• A sensory impairment (such as deafness or blindness)
• a physical disability
• A somatic condition (such as a chronic illness)
• a mental illness or disorder

Foster care: voluntary or through the courts

For children up to age 18 who can no longer live at home. The municipality provides foster parents where your child will live. This can also be only on weekends, vacations or during the day. The foster parents will then care for your child and raise your son or daughter.Your child will stay with the foster parents for as long as needed. 

• In voluntary foster care, you consult with your child and social workers about whether your child will live with foster parents.
• If the judge determines that foster care is necessary, your permission is not always required. The judge determines how long your child will stay with the foster parents.

We believe that good youth care is not only about rules and agreements, but about trust, cooperation and results. That is why every day we are committed to learning, improving and connecting to what is really needed. Together we ensure a healthy, safe and promising future for every child in Kerkrade.

We have divided four tasks within our youth team:

1. The municipal contact point for youth assistance
2. Research into what is needed
3. Management of aid implementation
4. Emergency youth assistance

Our consultants increasingly work from within the neighborhood, bringing us closer to families. This makes assistance faster, more personal, and better tailored to the situation at home.

We pay close attention to whether:

• The assistance is actually provided as agreed
• The goals are being achieved
• Help is not provided for longer than necessary
• Parents know exactly what is happening and what it costs
• Cooperation with other care providers is going well

We hold discussions at the family's home, together with the parents and the care providers involved. Is everything going well? Then we schedule follow-up appointments. Are there any issues? Then we work together to see how things can be improved. Sometimes that means switching to a different care provider.

Thanks to this approach, children and families are central, help is close at hand and clear, parents are informed and involved, and costs are controlled. 

 

• If you have a child for whom you need help, report it to the municipality.
• You give the municipality all the information needed to determine what help your child needs.
• You have a conversation with the municipality and experts about your child's situation.During this conversation, you indicate what you need help with.
• A few days after the interview, you will receive a report from the municipality. This states whether you can get help and if so, what kind.
• If you can get specific help, you apply for it. You will receive a form from the municipality for this.The municipality decides whether you will receive the specific help.
• During the application, the municipality will let you know if you are eligible for a personal budget(pgb). With this pgb you can purchase the specific youth care yourself.

Anyone can report a crisis situation to the South Limburg Youth Crisis Assistance Hotline at any time, day or night, seven days a week (24/7) by calling 043 - 60 45 777. 

Staff at the Hotline will ask a few questions over the phone and, if necessary, will be on site within two hours.

When is there a crisis?

There is a crisis in the assessment that "if we do nothing today, an emergency situation will arise for a young person and his or her environment." Important questions in this regard are:

• Is the situation unsafe for the youth and those around him?
• Are we at risk of causing lasting harm to those involved?
• What is different today from yesterday?

• General help you can usually get right away.
• Once you have applied for specific help, you will receive notification as soon as possible as to whether you will receive the help. This never takes longer than 8 weeks.

Youth assistance through your health insurance company

In the following cases, you arrange youth care not through the municipality, but through your health insurer:

• If your child's personal care is related to Health or high risk. The pediatric nurse can initiate this for you.Consider personal care for your child that involves:
  • Medical Health
  • learning to cope with a condition or disability
  • preventing a condition or disability from getting worse
  • the occurrence of a condition or disability for which your child is at high risk
• If your child requires lifelong intensive Health in an institution.