Shocked – nursery nightmares / kinderopvang

7 comments

1. Zorginspectie is the part of the department of WVG that’s responsible for inspecting, among others, daycare facilities, their reports can be found here:https://publiek.departementwvg.be/cobrha/

   If no reports are listed on there you can request them to be made public here: https://www.departementwvg.be/zorginspectie-inspectieverslagen-en-openbaarheid

   I strongly suggest that everyone who wants to send their child to a daycare facility or their parents to an elderly home does this. Heck, even if you plan to go to a hospital for surgery I suggest you do that.

   ^edit ^typo

2. There is a lack of resources for closely follow-up and accountability. You can see it in a lot of other sectors as well: politics, government departments …

   Society isn’t perfect, pressing problems get solved new problems arise.

3. The system is failing on all accounts.

   The staff in daycare is undereducated and underpaid. Some do it as a job of last resort instead of as a calling.

   Add to that that the number of kids per caregiver is about 2 kids too high for a proper job.

   Add to that that the inspection system is a career track, which means that caring about the children often comes second to playing office politics.

   Add to that the problem is also an economic one. Too expensive nurseries means less moms at work.

4. 9 per carer. 9 …

   France, Poland, Sweden, Denmark … it’s 1:5

   The Netherlands 1:4 for 0-1yo

   UK 1:3-4

   Germany 1:4

   What kind of a person can take care of 9 little ones? Either someone with a heart of gold who’s overworked and underappreciated or the type that causes these scandals…

   Our government is failing our babies and toddlers and there is a lot of evidence being 1 of 9 in a normal ‘good’ setting is already harmful to (emotional) development and how mentally resilient these babies will be as adults. That’s why other countries don’t even come close to this ratio. Parents often have no choice, it’s awful.

5. The main problem in the system is that there aren’t enough facilities.

   If parents are worried there is something wrong at the nursery, they should be able to switch to another one.

   But waiting lists are so long, their child will go to kindergarten before a spot opens up in another… so parents are stuck and the people running the nurseries know this, so they have all the power…

   What we need is more government funds for public nurseries. It’s even a good investment as more people will be able to work, creating more taxable incomes.

   Changing the rules or increasing inspections without providing more funds is not going to solve anything. Because as the inspections close more nurseries that are not up to code, the shortage will worsen to 10-11 babies per care giver!

6. My wife and I work as onthaalouder but for 2,5 to 12 years old. We have 9 kids each, which is a bunch. But we love the job and we can take care of our own kids. We are “aangesloten aan een dienst”, like all our colleagues with babies, we are limited to 18 kids. A lot of them do this with 3 kinderbegeleiders, so that’s 6 toddler’s or babies each. So there is big difference between us and the baby factories which have loads more.
   Personally we always said that if we would have to switch to babies instead of school kids. We would never go above 12 kids. But our own city politicians push our colleagues to go up to 18.

   These horror stories are ofcourse horrible but don’t forget these things happen in max 1-5% of all the creches together, I mean there are a shitload more of us doing a wonderful shitty job.

   That is also one of the reasons many colleagues don’t refuse, the paycheck. I love reading here on this reddit page of the amount of money ppl earn. Well we can only drool about that money. So yes the onthaalouders have a heart of gold and really love their kids.

   For example 10 years ago, my worst paycheck was 681€ for working 40hours/week in the month of February. If a child is sick, you get no money and that month was a real sickly month. Now we changed and offer pre- and after school daycare, we work every school holiday and we offer a sleeping class for the toddlers of our local school.
   So we work on a regular basis of 50-60hours each week. We start at 7:30 and end at 18:30, without the groceries collecting twice each week, the extra schooling we need to undertake each year and the huge amounts of administration. We make fresh warm food each day and have no breaks from the kids.

   Now for the money bonuses the job offers:
   You get paid for the amount of kids in our nursery. So no kids, no money, apart from a small amount we receive from the vakbond. But that is calculated on having 4 kids. So if you have 9 kids, you only get reimbursed if over 5 kids are sick.
   You are paid 2 weeks into the next month…
   You need to pay for their food, their toys(and they brake loads), the heating, sabam, favv, electricity, insurances, sinterklaas bags with goodies,…
   You are paid in an onkostenvergoeding, so no taxes! But you can’t bring anything in on the other hand. And ofc you need to deduct all the previous costs.
   Now you have your netto wages left. Tho you need to take in account the following things:
   -You don’t have a holiday bonus;
   -You don’t have an end year bonus;
   -You have the right on having 20 holidays, unpayed. We take 17 days each year and still ppl ask why we close.
   -You receive the lowest possible pension at the end of your working career at 67year;
   -If you have a work accident, you get the worst possible outcome. Since your annual income is a fictional one at 20k€(having first hand experience).

   Now the real bonuses:
   -once a year you get a birthday card;
   -we receive a small gift in our “week van de onthaalouder”.
   -nagging parents at each moment of the day( from 5:20 till 23:40)

   But the amount of love of the kids and awesome parents makes it worth working 11hours a day.

   But knowing this, how can you sell this job to anyone apart from being insane or have a heart for kids.

7. Prosperity over everything, so both parents have to work fulltime that’s what’s going wrong. People don’t see it … keep voting for those jackases promising a strong and independent Flanders. You’re ants in their minds, soft values like affordable childcare and a stable housing market don’t interest them.