You feel that something is different with your child, but you do not know what or how to proceed with that. These questions might pop up for you:
Where should I go?
Where should I ask for help?
In the Netherlands, a diagnosis is often crucial to get a proper help, since most of the supports for young children is covered by the government, which require a diagnosis. For children and parents, a diagnosis is a help tool to overview the situation, possible supports that is needed, and what to expect in the future. However, the process to find a diagnosis is not straightforward, and often take time.
There are several routes that you can use to find help for your children. These routes can also be done in parallel simultaneously, considering the waiting list time for each institution are varied. Below is a summary for how to navigate the healthcare system in the Netherlands.
Arriving in the Netherlands with a child with disability
If you have already a diagnosis from your previous country, you can contact your local municipality (gemeente) and mention it during the registration process. In this way, the municipality can take the relevant steps to find support for your child.
If you have no diagnosis yet, but already have some suspicion in your home country that your children’s development is different, it might be worthy to conduct the diagnosis in your home country. This might save time, considering that waiting list for health institution/practitioner in the Netherlands can be long, for example up to 2 weeks per each. Furthermore, testing in your own home country will give you the opportunity to conduct the test in your own mother language, which might be of advantage for your children or you as parents.
General questions
In the Netherlands, usually your general practitioner (huisarts) is a place where you can go to ask anything healthcare-related questions for your child. The huisarts is also obliged to perform the child check. The huisarts in the Netherlands is a start point for most of the care (and probably the fastest that you can access).
If a general practitioner comes to the conclusion that more is needed than the general practitioner or practice nurse can provide himself, and the care demand of a child therefore requires an independent assessment in the youth care pathway (with or without youth mental health care), the general practitioner can refer you directly to the youth care section of the municipality. On the basis of the Youth Act (jeugdwet), the municipality is obliged to deploy an appropriate youth assistance offer on the basis of this referral, even if this form of youth assistance was not initially purchased by the municipality.
Huisarts can also referral you to specialist doctor, and also healthcare institution that perform diagnosis assessment. If you already have a diagnosis from your previous country, you can also ask the huisarts to refer to the proper institution/specialist to continue the care.
Young children (< 4 years old)
Young children in the Netherlands are monitored by municipal-organized access such as consultatiebureau (CB). Usually, in the CB there is also a doctor that specialized in child development(jeugdart). You can explain your situation and ask for tips/referral. You can also go to the clinic for very young children. If your child goes to school, you can go to the school doctor (schoolart) or youth doctor.
In Arnhem, you can also think of early intervention assessment, which can be ask via Integrale Vroeghulp.
Specialist
When you already have a diagnosis from the previous country, you can go to your huisarts to ask for referral to the appropriate specialist/hospital/health institutions. Usually, the specialist will coordinate with the huisarts so that the patients can be treated comprehensively. Specialists also could refer you to the appropriate health institutions to conduct further diagnostic assessment, or therapy.
Tips: if your child has an anxiety during the examination, you can always ask upfront the facility of pedagogisch medewerker in the hospital to assist/comfort your child during examination.
These specialists often involved in the care and diagnostic trajectory: specialized nurse (Verpleegkundige), pediatrician (kinderarts), specialist in training (AIOS), geneticist (Klinisch geneticus), pediatrician specialized in metabolic disease (Kinderarts metabole ziekten), neurologist (Neuroloog /neurochirurg), physiotherapist (Revalidatiearts), doctor assistant (Psysician assistant), orthopedist (Orthopeed).
General supports
For general supports and therapy/diagnostic observation track in a health institution, coverage you can contact the Wijkteams. WIjkteams consists of several coaches with social worker backgrounds that assist all residents of Arnhem either young or old, with or without disabilities. They stand next to people, think along and help them move forward. So that they feel stronger again and can function better in society.
Figure 1. Simplified representation of the social, medical domain and youth care around a child (GGZ standard)
The professionals who work in municipal organized access can, together with the child and his parents, determine which offer is necessary and appropriate. The municipality must give shape to this on the basis of the Youth Act. The decentralization of youth care, including youth mental health care, makes it possible to optimize the identification and approach to problems and to keep it in one (coordinating) hand (one care provider in the family instead of several care providers who work alongside each other).
The municipality is responsible for both prevention and youth assistance. This also includes preventive care for children of parents with psychiatric or addiction problems; Municipalities were already responsible for this on the basis of the Social Support Act before the introduction of the Youth Act.