Different qualities and disciplines combined make a strong team

08 Apr 2019 - blog

Every year we treat 750 young people in our beautiful clinic in Hilvarenbeek. These young people are between 13 and 25 years old and suffer from mental health issues, addictions and/or behavioural problems. Often, they have already gone through a very long road of different mental health care, without a positive result.

It is up to us to do things really differently from other youth mental health care institutions. If we offer the same treatment as the previous one, you can expect the same results. We make a true and sincere connection from the very first moment and make sure that our fellows gain complete confidence in us by connecting them to the right professional at the right time.

That is why our multidisciplinary team not only consists of psychiatrists and psychologists, but also of expert by experience counsellors and youth coaches. All these disciplines are, looking at them hierarchically, completely equal. I am tremendously proud of all of them, but this time I would like to highlight the youth coaches in particular.

These awesome men and women welcome our fellows with open arms and overwhelm them with warmth and love. They act as the big brothers and sisters of our fellows. They make them laugh, but at the same time they confront them with their own behaviour. Our coaches make sure that the fellows become more confident. Confident about the treatment, about our clinic, but most importantly: about themselves. Only when that trust has been built, our psychologists, counsellors and psychiatrists are able to treat the underlying problems.

These processes never run separately, but they go hand in hand. Employees from all our disciplines meet three times a day to discuss the fellows. In this team, each discipline has its own qualities, but they all act as equals. Because only when everyone involved combine their qualities, we can offer the best treatment to our fellows. That is what we stand for and that is what we are committed to. Yes We Can!

Jan Willem Poot 
Founder of Yes We Can Youth Clinics