**3.4 Full and productive employment, decent work for all**

Statistics Netherlands reports negative trends in SDGs 8 and 10. The employment potentiel of the Ducth population is increasingly underutitlized, and growing part of the jobs do not offer full employment nor the security of indefinite contracts. Further, the participation of people in social and societal activities is decreasing. Expenditures in (mental) health care and social protection display declining trends too. However, just these topics have been subject of a major policy reform in three social domains. In order to understand how this policy reform worked out since 2015, we will discuss policy evaluation reports. The aim is to understand how inititially resilience promoting reforms have turned into the countereffect of increased risk exposure of target groups and decreased opportunities to overcome their adversity.

From January 2015 the **Participation Act** is in effect, holding that people from disadvantaged positions should be guided to employment. The policy theory

reflects the idea of fostering the resilience of people. The act intended to establish a uniform framework with some discretion for municipalities [61]. However, since the start of the reform these local actors were forced to realize savings on the aggregated national budget.

Due to the reform, young slightly diseabled persons are more frequently employed. However the income and job security are decreased considarbly through part-time employment and temporary contracts [61]. Decrease of full and secure emploument is a general trend in the Dutch labor market. However, these changes increases the risk of getting impairments in work [62]. Hence, the group of slightly disabled youngsters is exposed to a risk for which they are considerably more sensitive. Another target group of the act concerns persons employed in social protected workplaces. The idea was to guide these protected workers to regular employment. This transfer is not established succesfully. Persons lost their jobs and became depended on social assistance [61]. People living on social assistance found employment to a lesser degree, of an inferior quality, and with part-time cancelable contracts [61]. Inspite of legal and financial incentives, and of medical reassessments, people receiving the social assistance on the basis employment impairments appear to have almost no chance on reemployment in jobs adapted to their restricted capacities [63].

Summarizing, the government has overestimated the chances on regular and full employment for these groups. Furthermore, the policy theory was a generalization that misunderstood the individual and group-specific pacing needs. The savings on the budgets have urged municipalities to restrict their case load to clients with small problems and restrictions [61].

In 2015 as well, the **Youth Act** regarding the provision of mental health care for young peope was issued [64]. The procurement structures implemented, incent care organizations to behaviors that conflict with the purpose of care provision [64]. The compensation rules and administrative requirements promote a preference for clients with singular complaints. Clients with multiple and chronic complaints, including problems in their personal and social situations are less likely to be served. These clients and their personal supporters, if present, are faced with waitinglist and lack of timely mental health care. Their situation is considered as alarming [65].

At the start of 2015, the **Social Support Act** came into effect as well. The act aimes at a combination of formal and informal support in the housing and personal transport of people with physical and mental problems [66]. In evaluation research, there is no evidence that the personal budgets have contributed to self-reliance, participation or a higher quality of life [66]. Meanwhile, a part of the municipalities put little effort in checks on legality of applications, a condition that is associated with avoidable fraud [67]. There is a considerable likelihood to become involved into organized fraud, either as an accessory or as a vicitm [68].
