Breaking barriers: empowering youths in education and employment transitions

School Attendance Problems (SAPs)—such as school refusal, truancy, and exclusion—impact 10–15% of youth globally and in the Netherlands and pose a major challenge to inclusive participation in education and the school-to-work transition. Autistic youth are disproportionately affected, yet current interventions remain fragmented, not tailored, and disorder-specific.
This interdisciplinary research project addresses the urgent need to better understand and reduce SAPs using a syndemic approach, which examines how mental health conditions, physical health, social context, and systemic factors interact and reinforce each other. Drawing from a large regional dataset (ELAN-GGD; ~750,000 individuals) and in-depth qualitative work with youth, families, and professionals, we aim to generate cross-condition knowledge that transcends diagnostic labels. Special attention is given to autistic youth in special education, who represent a particularly vulnerable and understudied group.
Co-developed with stakeholders (youth, families, teachers, care providers, and policymakers), the project identifies actionable levers for early detection, tailored support, and policy change. Through participatory methods, we co-create interventions and develop tools to improve educational inclusion and school-to-work outcomes. This proposal contributes to system-level integration across domains (education, care, social participation), and offers a pathway to reduce school exclusion at scale. By synthesizing knowledge across conditions and sectors, this project contributes directly to the goals of the Dutch Research Agenda: improved participation of youth with mental health conditions, through decompartmentalization and aligned societal values.