It is high time for assistance assisting again

The debate about the assistance is one of extremes. Right believes that humanity is to move only with the hard hand. Left is happy to rely on an unconditional basic income.

Both camps hit by. For it is good that benefits are accompanied by duties. But it is high time to establish myself more rights front. The assistance is our last resort. People who end up there, deserve protection and support to again find a place in society. This requires a balance between rights and obligations.

When only protect but people, the assistance is a hammock. We have seen in the past. Following the introduction of the aid functioned almost as a basic income. In 1993 a commission of inquiry headed by Labour economist Arie van der Zwan with a painful evaluation. Which hurried on organized fraud, calculating behavior and avoiding work. The arguments for a basic income witness so little historical awareness.

Other extreme
But since the nineties we are insidiously arrived at the other extreme, that strand-stringent severe. Our grandmothers be fined for fraud because they kept no records of hours of babysitting the grandchildren: an 'in money' work. The former schoolteacher must prick paper next to the playground of her former students. Unfortunately, these stories come up with some regularity.

The safety net is sometimes tightened so that people in the community are catapulted and hard land next to the safety net. We have the duty on welfare so well organized. But it is high time to strengthen the rights of aid recipients.

First aid recipients have a right to more customization. And not just on paper. For where the decentralization policy intact freedom, municipalities are now required to impose severe penalties for alleged abuse or breach of the obligation to provide information. True customization makes it possible to distinguish between "non-Willers' and 'non-kunners'.

Secondly assistance recipients have a right to positive incentives. A large study showed recently that social services people who are more than six months in the assistance barely see, sometimes for years. Let us stop a fictional documentary control over people and search for control with people.

Guarantee rights
Thirdly, it is high time for the legal guarantee of the rights of aid recipients. In other countries, the duties and compensating measures. But we also see safeguards in the law to ensure that those obligations will help people move forward.

For example, that contribute demonstrably working on the development of people, that the working conditions are good and do not humiliate the work. But not in the Netherlands. It usually best boy of the class is suddenly very bad here.

It is high time that we stop talking in extremes of assistance. Of confidence or just simply distrust people are none the wiser. It is high time for assistance assisting again. To Marga Klompé, the spiritual mother of the assistance, to speak: that benefit claimants back "with his head" can go into society.

Wouter Beekers, director of Scientific Institute of Christian Union
Jochem Westert, lawyer and author of the report appearing today "With head held high."

http://www.trouw.nl/  By: Wouter Beekers and Jochem Westert Photo: Reuters