The licence of child daycare centre De Vlindertjes van Elshout in Schoten, which opened its doors again without prior approval while it was still suspended, has been lifted by childcare services Kind & Gezin.
The organisation that supervises nurseries in Flanders had recently decided to suspend the recognition of De Vlindertjes van Elshout as of 1 March in case of emergency after receiving an anonymous complaint containing various serious claims. Despite this suspension, the daycare centre re-opened its doors on Wednesday.
"The reason for lifting the licence is the fact that she is not observing the no-contact clause for children," spokesperson Nele Wouters of Kind & Gezin confirmed to The Brussels Times.
"Unilaterally, she decided to open her childcare centre despite our urgent suspension, meaning the centre does not have the integrity and trustworthiness to organise childcare," she added.
When asked on Thursday whether the centre's reopening despite the suspension will impact this final decision, Wouters stated that Kind & Gezin "takes it very seriously if a nursery ignores our suspension and do not comply."
The organisation has now officially decided to suspend the licence. In the meantime, this decision has been communicated to the local authorities so that the police can close the centre.
Crisis timeline
At the beginning of last year, the manager of De Vlindertjes van Elshout was sentenced to one year's imprisonment with a suspended sentence for the degrading treatment of some of the children and, according to the sentence, was only allowed to do administrative work.
In February a new complaint was received containing serious serious claims regarding the mistreatment of children, resulting in the centre being suspended for two months as a matter of urgency.
Normally, Kind & Gezin establishes and objectifies anonymous complaints and reports in order to give them a legal basis, but Wouters said that in light of the history of the nursery, "we decided to impose a suspension of two months."
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This system was implemented so the organisation would be able to take action based on reports of abuse alone in light of the crisis in the childcare sector that Flanders has been dealing with, which started when a six-month-old girl died as a result of injuries sustained while staying in a Ghent crèche. Parents had previously filed complaints against the childcare centre.
As a result of this incident, Kind & Gezin can bypass the necessary legal steps previously needed to collect hard evidence of abuse if a substantial number of claims are made against a nursery if the health and safety of children are in jeopardy, even if there is no hard evidence of abuse.
The Flemish government also said it will tighten the enforcement and quality policy in the care and welfare sectors.
