Samenvatting

In the coming years, a major decentralization operation in the social sector will make the Dutch municipalities fully responsible for support, assistance and home care. The starting point for decentralization is the ‘one family, one plan, one coordinator’-approach. Under municipal reign, professionals will have to coordinate their actions in order to provide more customized services and to enhance citizens’ involvement. In this contribution we discuss two pilots, of the municipalities of Enschede and Leeuwarden, which have experimented with the new approach. We describe the background, institutional structure and results and conclude that there is evidence that the new approach has worked. We end with a reflection on the present challenges that municipalities are confronted with, when applying the approach under the current conditions of new responsibilities and severe budget cuts.