The focus of this presentation is on behaviour and education support teams (BEST) in Dutch primary and secondary schools and in further professional education. These teams are integrated in the school learning support structure and aim to support children and youth with behaviour, developmental/pycho-social and/or learning problems as well as their parents and schools. Activities include diagnostics c.q. problem taxation, consultation to teachers, intervention planning and coordination, service delivery and prevention. The teams are chaired by the school and consist educational experts, a school medical doctor, a social worker and a professional from the children and youth care office. If necessary other professionals can be included from mental health and police. Best is a major initiative to strengthen partnerships of education with health and human services to improve outcomes for children and youth. The Dutch government supports the develeopment of behaviour and education support teams since 2002. The Netherlands Youth Institute coordinates research and development activities and has developed a quality framework and implementation tools to upscale these teams in primary, secondary and further education. The presentation starts with an brief overview of the objectives and features of this innovative approach and small scale impact studies that have been undertaken in 2006-2008. Current research and implementation strategies will be presented and discussed. The focus is on the findings of national surveys undertaken in 2006, 2007 and 2008 and on the logic and practice of this complex innovation in the Netherlands to support at risk children and youth and their schools. The theoretical framework draws upon the work of Van Veen (2004, 2007 and 2008) in the Netherlands and Hallam (2005) and Halsey (2006) in the UK.

To monitor the implementation of behaviour and education support teams and to identify main features (such as participating professionals of education, health and human services, integration in the school support structure and regional social infrastructure, process characteristics and perceived outcomes, policy support and professional development needs) we have used surveys. BEST-coordinators of all 252 primairy schools networks (7.000 schools), all 1200 secondary schools and 80 colleges for further education have been send a structured questionnaire, as well as the heads of educational and youth policy in all 440 local authorities. Focus groups with BEST-coordinators, representatives from local authorities and provinces (children and youth care) as well as national organisations (education, health and human services) were used to collect additional qualitative data on perceived impact, challenges and implementation support needs.

The data collection of the 2008 survey on behaviour and education support teams in The Netherlands will be carried out in january-march 2009. Data analysis will be completed in may 2009. The reserach publication will be available in july 2009.