The day to day work of social professionals working with ‘hard to reach’ people, is known to be highly complex. Especially the interdependent relationship with other agencies.
Often problems are not only related to social and welfare themes but also to safety and justice issues. Therefore a wider perspective is asked for. Questions answered in this article are: which elements are being perceived as complex in the relationship with other agencies and how do professionals relate to these elements. Data is used from former research performed within a team working with Roma families. Knowledge, expertise, information sharing and coordination are perceived as complex elements. Good contacts and communication between individual professionals are essential. Understanding each other’s perspective is crucial in achieving a joint effort. Professionals need intensive support in order to keep focused on the values of their work and avoid being led by emotions and issues of the day.

This article discusses the importance of reflection for prison staff. Their work is both physical and emotionally incriminating. That increases risk on turnover, burn-out, psychosomatic diseases and negative experiences with prisoners. To render all challenges in their work it’s important to build up resiliency. One of the means to stimulate resilience is organized reflection. It is described how guided by experts, reflecting on own experiences can contribute to resilience of prison employees and strengthen their learning capacity. That is done by literature study and a description of experiences with organized reflection in PI Vught.

Since 2003, Dutch juveniles on remand who go to school or have work can be held in ‘night detention’: they attend their school or work during the day and spend the nights and weekends in a young offender institution. The authors examine how this form of youth detention relates to basic principles in juvenile criminal law and penitentiary law. They argue that based on international standards stating that juveniles should be detained with as few restraints as possible, night detention should be made available if circumstances allow it not only for juveniles on remand, but for juveniles subject to any form of detention.