Although the Netherlands provides many social services, there are still some people who face urgent financial problems. Counsellors or social workers can help them request emergency assistance at the agency of the Urgent Needs Foundation (SUN). ‘An emergency is an emergency; we have no clear definition for it,’ says director Nathalie Boerebach. ‘SUN emergency relief agencies supply donations for many different purposes.’
A brief history: SUN Netherlands dates back to 1914, when its legal predecessor was established in order to alleviate the needs of Belgian refugees. The refugees had no housing, no clothing and no school supplies. Following World War I, there was the Great Depression and after that World War II. So the need for emergency aid continued. In 1963, when the Dutch Social Assistance Act (Algemene Bijstandswet) was introduced, many municipal authorities decided to dispense with emergency aid agencies. By the time it became clear that social assistance was not sufficient enough to meet all needs, only five such agencies remained. Yet the scale and complexity of problems regarding poverty, debt and acute need continued to rise. ‘After all, we do not have a Minister for Poverty without reason,’ says Nathalie Boerebach. ‘Today, we are back to 26 agencies that collectively provide services to over 100 municipalities. But because we believe that emergency aid should not depend on chance, we are aiming for nation-wide coverage.’
Anja has five children; she is a victim of domestic violence and is in the process of a divorce. All bank accounts remain in her husband’s name and he collects all the benefits, but doesn’t contribute to anything. In order to transfer the benefits into her own name, an address investigation against him has been started. The investigation will last for another three months. To prevent Anja from being made homeless and unable to care for her children, SUN Emergency Services will provide her with three months’ subsistence money as a bridging measure.
Brokers
SUN Netherlands is the development body for the local emergency aid agencies. Dioraphte invests in the overhead costs of SUN Netherlands, and this has multiplier effect. This is because SUN Netherlands and the emergency aid agencies in municipalities in the Netherlands manage to find private funding towards urgent needs, that would otherwise not have existed or would have remained unused. The aid agencies receive money from both local and regional parties such as churches, businesses, foundations or private individuals. As Boerebach notes, the applications and the applicants vary widely. ‘We don’t have any clear target groups or purposes nor any specific amounts. Our local branches are well equipped to broker and arrange money and goods. Donors are guaranteed that their donations will benefit the target group a hundred per cent. With the support of Dioraphte, we were able to attract new donors and have recently set up three new emergency aid agencies.’
Signposting
Together, SUN Netherlands and the emergency relief agencies are developing the Data Dashboard for Urgent Needs (DUN), which Dioraphte also supports. ‘It has only just become operational,’ says Boerebach. ‘Now we will start to insert the data generated by the local agencies into DUN. All applications, donations, the applicants’ age… In addition, we will also update DUN with more general information, such as figures provided by Statistics Netherlands (CBS). In the future, we’ll be able to identify certain trends or determine which target groups face the most urgent problems by simply pressing a button. These indicators will provide us with tools for discussions with municipalities and the national government. Together, we will be able to unlock valuable insights that are able to inform policy. A systemic change takes a long time. Through DUN, we are making our contribution towards that. But in the meantime, we won’t forget to act.’
