Your child injures their foot on the beach, you or your partner fall ill - they need to see a doctor but neither you nor anyone else in the family speaks the local language. So what do you do if you have a health problem while abroad?
Start by calling your insurance company's 24-hour medical emergency number for advice, including help with language problems.
You need to do this first, in any case, because otherwise you may not be able to reclaim the cost of any treatment.
Your insurer may even arrange to pay directly for treatment, rather than reimburse you later.
Don't forget to keep the receipts for anything you have to pay for, so you can claim the money back.
If you have an E111 form for the person requiring treatment, you'll get free or reduced-cost treatment. The E111 is valid in most countries in Europe but covers only what residents of that country receive in emergency care, not necessarily what you would receive under the NHS - so you may have to pay for ambulances, for example. The form would not pay for the patient to be flown home, either. An air ambulance could cost thousands of pounds, which is why travel insurance is essential.
Source: Travel feature in Good Housekeeping, August 2005
Monday, 17 September 2018
Monday, 3 September 2018
Reducing Prisoner Numbers the Dutch Way
In the Netherlands, 19 prisons have been closed in the past few years, with more expected to close next year (2017), at a time when the UK and much of the world struggle with overcrowded prisons. How does this work?
The Dutch way is to look at the individual and try to remove the reason for the crime. If someone has a drug problem, they treat the addiction, if they are aggressive they provide anger management help, and debt counselling is given to those with money problems. Inmates must be willing to change but over the last ten years, the strategy has increasingly been effective.
Some persistent offenders (known as 'revolving-door criminals') are eventually given two-year sentences and tailor-made rehabilitation programmes. Fewer than 10% then return to prison after their release. (In England and Wales, and the US, roughly half those serving short sentences re-offend within two years; the figure is often higher for young adults).
In high-security prisons, offenders are helped to adapt to normal life on completion of their sentence. Large exercise yards include trees, picnic tables and volleyball nets; fresh air reduces stress levels for both inmates and staff. Inmates are allowed to walk unaccompanied to the library, clinic and canteen and they can learn to cook in the prison kitchen.
Dutch judges often use alternatives to prison such as community service orders, fines and electronic tagging of offenders, believing that it is better for people to stay in their jobs and with their families. Jail is increasingly used for those who are too dangerous to release or for vulnerable offenders who need the help available inside.
Some critics argue that the drop in recorded crime (25% over the past eight years) results from the closure of police stations, as a result of budget cuts, which makes crime harder to report, and low detection rates.
Some closed prisons have been converted into asylum reception centres, providing work for some former prison guards, while the desire to protect prison service jobs has resulted in some foreign inmates from Norway and Belgium serving their sentences in the Netherlands.
Source: The Dutch prison crisis: a shortage of prisoners, by Lucy Ash. BBC News item, 10 Nov. 2016
Source: Updated report. Why there are so few prisoners in the Netherlands, in the Guardian, 11 Dec. 2019
The Dutch way is to look at the individual and try to remove the reason for the crime. If someone has a drug problem, they treat the addiction, if they are aggressive they provide anger management help, and debt counselling is given to those with money problems. Inmates must be willing to change but over the last ten years, the strategy has increasingly been effective.
Some persistent offenders (known as 'revolving-door criminals') are eventually given two-year sentences and tailor-made rehabilitation programmes. Fewer than 10% then return to prison after their release. (In England and Wales, and the US, roughly half those serving short sentences re-offend within two years; the figure is often higher for young adults).
In high-security prisons, offenders are helped to adapt to normal life on completion of their sentence. Large exercise yards include trees, picnic tables and volleyball nets; fresh air reduces stress levels for both inmates and staff. Inmates are allowed to walk unaccompanied to the library, clinic and canteen and they can learn to cook in the prison kitchen.
Dutch judges often use alternatives to prison such as community service orders, fines and electronic tagging of offenders, believing that it is better for people to stay in their jobs and with their families. Jail is increasingly used for those who are too dangerous to release or for vulnerable offenders who need the help available inside.
Some critics argue that the drop in recorded crime (25% over the past eight years) results from the closure of police stations, as a result of budget cuts, which makes crime harder to report, and low detection rates.
Some closed prisons have been converted into asylum reception centres, providing work for some former prison guards, while the desire to protect prison service jobs has resulted in some foreign inmates from Norway and Belgium serving their sentences in the Netherlands.
Source: The Dutch prison crisis: a shortage of prisoners, by Lucy Ash. BBC News item, 10 Nov. 2016
Source: Updated report. Why there are so few prisoners in the Netherlands, in the Guardian, 11 Dec. 2019
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