Child Protection Interventions in Dutch and Dutch-Curaçaoan Single-Mother Families

• In Event: Power to Punish: Interrogating State Interventions

Abstract

Despite the fact that the Dutch Youth Care system is currently highly criticized due to e.g. high-profile family dramas, low-quality diagnosis and decision-making and ineffective voluntary-based interventions (Clarijs 2013; Dutch Inspectorate for Youth Care 2012; 2013), child protection interventions are far from exceptional in particular groups, such as Dutch-Curaçaoan single-mother families (Van Nijnatten 2007; Buysse et al. 2010).
These families are identified as being at risk of crime and therefore in need of preventive (child protection) intervention. Based on my thirty-month ethnographic research among thirty Dutch and Dutch-Curaçaoan single-mother families I conclude that the needs of these women are often translated into risks. The Dutch-Curaçaoan single-mother families who face child protection interventions have all asked for voluntary administrative or childrearing assistance. In the Youth Care process they have, however, been labeled as ‘multi-problem families’, based on factors as being poor, living in ‘bad’ neighbourhoods, having a low IQ, being low educated and lacking childrearing skills.
Based on my findings, it seems that these families are an easy target-group to recruit ‘under the cover of kindness’ (Margolin 1997) for different forms of (compulsory) interventions. It is actually striking that these families end up with child protection while they asked for help.

Author

• Tessa Verhallen, Utrecht University