Samenvatting

This study provides a secondary analysis of interview data on the perspective of youth care professionals on societal expectations and customisation. Societal expectations, along with those from the government, pro-fessional groups and the market, influence the decisions professionals make to provide appropriate solutions and tailored services. From the perspective of youth care profes-sionals, we identified five societal expecta-tions: 1) youth care workers can solve all problems; 2) youth care workers unjustly remove children from their homes; 3) young people cause their own problems; 4) youth care is unavailable when needed; and 5) youth care could be provided more efficient-ly. These societal expectations differ from those of the government, professional groups and the market. They are more elusive and for instance cannot be traced back to key documents. Yet they play a crucial role in the daily work of youth care professionals. So-cietal expectations are associated with multi-ple interpretations of customisation, result oriented as well as more process oriented. Due to the complex problems of young peo-ple, it is important to emphasise the process-oriented approach to customisation in addi-tion to the result-oriented approach.