It all started with… 12 september 2017

The challenge How can we prevent child consequences of divorces? Idea brought up by Youth Protection who faces these consequences for children daily Excisting programmes were not so successful, The compulsory parenting plan and the divorce covenant offer insufficient grief. The legal procedures for divorce are counterproductive, because they strengthen the contradictions and conflicts earlier than diminish Everybody agrees that we must invest in preventive interventions

Divorce if parents do not represent if parents have serious the child perspective if parents have serious conflicts if parents use their child in their mutual struggle adversely affects the mental health of their child if parents no longer occupy their parent positions

Some numbers Legal divorces (2014): 35.400 Legal divorces with children involved: 19.900 Minor children involved: 36.000 People go apart with children involved: 70.000 Children who faces divorces: 54.000 Children who face consequences of a fight divorce: 16.000 Children really suffer from the negative consequences: 3.500

Problems for children Loyalty conflict School absence Negative school results Psychological problems Agressive and criminal behaviour Child abuse

€ 117.000 Jenny suddenly leaves Return home after 3 weeks, confused and neglected After heavy fights Dirk leaves with the childern and go to his parents Dirk requests for divorce Jenny gets more and more confused, refuses help and build up debts The judge assigns the care of the children to Jenny. She can’t handle the situation and neglects the children Childcare visits the family more often. Finally: under supervision and temporary foster care Multi-problem € 117.000

The idea: “Besluit met muisjes” We cannot overcome it 100%  but… can we at least prevent it as much as possible reducing unnecessary claim on legal procedures (and their costs)

A broad partnership to invest in prevention We started with a Social Cost Benefit Analysis (MKBA) to understand: - the extent of the costs of divorce and - the costs involved - who will bear these costs Based on these MKBA we could build a partnership to invest in prevention! Total costs a year on fight divorces in NL: € 96.600.000

Partnership Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport Ministry of Justice Municipalities: Zaanstad, Apeldoorn, Amersfoort, Amsterdam, Winterswijk, Berkelland, Oostgelre, Aalten, Hengelo, Kapelle, Schouwen-Duiveland, Tholen, Borsele, Goes, Reimerswaal, Noord-Beveland Al kind of partners like: Dutch Association for Gynecology, obstetricians, Child care association, youth health care, child ombudsman, Dutch Youth Institute, General practitioners,…

Two-year programme Invest in preventative interventions Monitor the effect and impact of these intenventions: succesfull or not Enhance methods and interventions that are succefull and scale up Hands on support for municipalities Test the added value of online tooling Kick-off: 27 september 2017

One of the instruments: ‘Besluit met muisjes’ First name: birth plan! Support partners/ parents to make good and robust agreements about raising their child. These arrangements can help parents in the time they are together, but certainly in the unforeseen situation, that the parents break up/ divorce. Arrangements may be guiding in the initial stage of a divorce and may also work preventively on the occurrence of such problems This arrangements prevent parents who divorce both from entering the blank arena of the parent plan without a common child perspective. This prior-known and common direction gives no guarantees, but makes the outcome more predictable and thus less threatening for the healthy and safe development of the affected child.

Based on proven method and technology

Prototyping Briefing document (intake, co-working space, birth plan) Q4 2017 Build the prototype Q1 2018 Test the prototype Q2 2018 Make the business model en build the product Q3&4 2018

Briefing document Intake: Containing questions to parents with the intention of reflecting on raising children or childcare agreements. Co-working space: In addition, the focus on the difficult subjects that always play when there is a divorce. For example - School choice - Distribution care - Family - Move - Financial consequences - …. Concept Birth plan