Health services
The Netherlands has a health service in place for children from 0 to 19 years, which falls under the responsibility of the municipality and is carried out by the local health service (GGD). The health service includes the baby well clinics and toddler, primary and secondary school health care. Until the age of 19 there are regular check-ups and screenings. The role of the local health service is monitoring development, vaccinations, screening, information and advice, and referral to more specialised health services when necessary.
The local health service also has specific tasks such as inspecting the health and safety regulations at child day care centres and introducing specific programmes on the prevention of alcohol and drug abuse of children and young people. The local health services will work very closely with the newly created Youth and Family Centres. In most municipalities they will be integrated in this central children’s service. Also a national system of a digital child dossier will be developed (to be used locally), which will contain all data on the health and other relevant information of each child between 0 and 19 years.
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