Parliament is discussing childcare on Wednesday. Union Abvakabo FNV deputy chairwoman Corrie van Brenk has a few pointers for minister Kamp on website Sociale Vraagstukken.: opt for quality and listen to the childcare workers.

Childcare workers
Although plenty of stricter rules and regulations surrounding childcare were introduced with the childcare law of 2005, there is still much that remains unclear. One of the rules that needs to be clarified is the child-carer ratio. How many children of what age can one carer take on? How many in a group? The existing rules allow room for exceptions which makes childcare policy complicated and confusing.
Moreover, the voice of the childcare workers themselves goes unheard. Abvakabo FNV has repeatedly asked social affairs minister Henk Kamp to involve pedagogues and child care workers in the policy agreement talks between parents and organisations but to no avail. The rules need to be simplified.
Competitive
One of the goals of the 2005 law was to make daycare centres competitive. It would make for better quality and give parents more choice. In practice parents’ choice is still limited. Parts of the country have waiting lists and parents are unlikely to swop daycare centres or travel beyond the direct vicinity of their homes or workplace.
Good childcare should not be at the mercy of market mechanisms anyway. Daycare centres are part of that market and are trying to find ways to cut costs in order to stay competitive. This has resulted in higher child-carer ratios. Abvakabo FNV has registered numerous cases of either too many children in groups or too few carers or both during 2009 and 2010 leading to unsafe situations and too much pressure on childcare workers.
One of the recommendations of the Gunning commission which was installed after the sex abuse case at an Amsterdam crèche this year is that no childcare worker should ever work alone, something the Abvokabo FNV and its members have been advocating for years.
Quality, not unregulated care
The €1m cutback on childcare subsidies announced by the minister will cause a fall in demand for childcare and force daycare centres to save even more on staff. This is an enormous departure from the measures that have been taken to improve childcare and staff training in particular over the last few years. Parents may choose to find other, completely unregulated types of daycare for their children. The minister’s policy will also stop parents from working, young people who are badly needed now and in the future.
The country needs good and accessible child care. The minister’s cutbacks are putting an entire sector under pressure. Abvakabo FNV urges him to reconsider and go for quality in childcare.