Vulnerable citizens of South Limburg do not follow a straight and even path. The path has interruptions and accelerations. The provision of care and support to follow that path, and commitment from safety and care when this is not possible, is covered by various laws and is implemented by various organizations.

In order to provide appropriate support, it is necessary that we make connections and have insight into what people are encountering. It concerns connections between the citizen’s own experience, implementing organizations (operational-tactical), policy developers and administrators. Only with joint policy-making that leads to a broad strategic agenda can individual organizations do justice to meaningful decision-making, and implementation can effectively tackle social problems and the right course is set for vulnerable citizens.

The administrative structure around regionally related themes relating to care and safety is not optimally organized. There is a multitude of consultative bodies related to Care and Safety issues and domains within South-Limburg, working with little overview and a lot of overlap in members, tasks and responsibilities. There is no unified direction yet, and besides overlap, there could also be gaps.

That is why we now request the help of PREMIUM students.
Provide us with a clear overview of the current multitude of consultative bodies, an indication of the overlap and gaps, and as such indicate a roadmap to how an efficient governance structure can be set up with official and administrative support, in clear coherence with the committee Zorg & Veiligheid as expressed in the document “Van Fundament Naar Gebouw”.

The objective is to create a learning network. The term ‘learning network’ has been in use for some time, especially in the healthcare sector, as a practical way of improving the expertise of healthcare employees: learning from each other, especially if you have a different substantive discipline or work for a different organization, but for the same ( type) clients. How can health and safety organizations understand each other better, align their working methods more effectively, find each other more quickly, engage each other’s expertise easily and at an early stage, in order to achieve a more effective approach to domestic violence and child abuse?

Municipalities and healthcare organizations with strategic issues in the social domain have come to the right place at JB Lorenz! Shoulder to shoulder, we offer sustainable solutions for organizational development issues and advise on appropriate governance. Because organizing complex partnerships that transcend organizations; that’s what we’re good at.

JB Lorenz is the program director for The Care & Safety Committee South Limburg.

This Committee is result of a  governance trajectory in South Limburg that focuses on better coherence in tackling social problems that arise from themes at the intersection of healthcare, welfare, safety and punishment. That coherence is too often lacking at the moment. In 2020, a start was therefore made to realize the ambition to achieve better governance for healthcare and safety in South Limburg.

The collaboration partners (municipalities, GGZ, Police, Public Prosecution Service, GGD, Safety Houses and Veilig Thuis) in South Limburg have started this initiative for further cooperation in the field of care and safety. The core task of this Care and Safety Committee is ensuring that stubborn bottlenecks are tackled via short lines of communication and to set up governance more efficiently. Learning networks play an important role.

The Care and Safety Committee aims to:

• influence bottlenecks/stagnations within the continuity of care and safety;
• promote shared ownership;
• ensure coherence and connection between upcoming and current projects/files;
• fulfill an important networking role, and
• connect with national developments.

The Committee (resources for this are provided by ZonMw) will initially focus on making connections and providing integrated advice in the region. In the long term, they want to work towards a more solid foundation with the prospect of perseverance and possible decision-making.