Samenvatting

Seven years after the introduction of the Youth Act and the Appropriate Education Act in the Netherlands, the desired cross-domain cooperation between the two sectors has not yet been sufficiently achieved. In this article we try to understand why this is the case by reflecting from the perspective of cooperation and network theories on the reconstructed policy theory for this cooperation and the three policy instruments introduced; the agreement-oriented consultation, individual case consultation and the geographical reclassification. Based on this analysis, we examine the extent to which the existing policy instruments of the Appropriate Education Act and the Youth Act provide sufficient tools to realise cross-domain cooperation in which agreement is reached. We study the policy theory based on a document analysis of the Youth Act and the Appropriate Education Act. We then reflect on this on the basis of theoretical success and risk factors for successful cross-domain collaboration. Our analysis shows that the three instruments offer an insufficient basis for sustainable cooperation due to (1) the excessive non-committal character for the complex context in which it is applied, which means that there is a risk of ‘agree to disagree’; (2) the limited contact, which means that agreement is limited; and (3) the high number of actors involved as a result of the mismatch between geographical areas of schools and municipalities.