The development of youth care policies in Flanders is characterized by a desire to move away from a protection model, and to base youth care on a distinction between ‘problematic youth’ and ‘young people in trouble. At the same time, it seeks to attune the answers to juvenile delinquency and broader youth care, from the assumption that educational strategies are the most effective response to juvenile delinquency. In this article this dual ambition is analyzed through a historical retrospective of this debate since the first Child Protection Law in 1912. The analysis shows that youth care is dominantly seen as a social educational project, aimed at compensating educational deficits of parents. This instrumental approach to child welfare happens at the expense of the legal protection of minors and the development of youth care as a social resource instead of a deficit oriented correction. We advocate for a reorientation of this social educational project, with the social rights of the child as a framework, also in situations where children and young people are faced with a social response to juvenile delinquency.