Following a train of incidents at Flemish nurseries, another children's daycare centre has been temporarily closed in Landen following complaints from parents regarding reports of an injury.
A nursery in Attenhoven, in the municipality of Landen in Flemish Brabant, has been temporarily suspended for three months for the duration of an ongoing investigation into the reported incident, the agency in charge of childcare services, Opgroeien, confirmed.
"We decided to suspend the childcare worker for three months after we received a complaint about this childcare worker and after a doctor found injuries on the child's body," spokesperson Nele Wouters told The Brussels Times.
She added that there is an investigation ongoing and that the agency wanted the certainty that no more children were being cared for in the daycare centre while this enquiry was ongoing.
"At the moment, it is not yet clear what happened and where it happened, but because this concerns injuries to a child, it is important to suspend their activities until we have a definite answer," she added.
She emphasised that this is a temporary measure to ensure "calm and serenity", but that no final decision has been reached yet.
Matter of urgency
The agency decided to suspend the daycare centre as a matter of urgency based on the precautionary principle, which was introduced in light of recent incidents.
At the end of February, Opgroeien announced it would bypass all the necessary legal steps previously needed to collect hard evidence of abuse if a substantial number of serious claims are made against a nursery.
"Whereas, in the past, we acted on the basis of objective facts, it is this principle that allows us to take precautionary measures in the interests of the safety of children. If there are complaints, and if there are still questions and uncertainties, we want to take this decision as a precautionary measure," Wouters explained.
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The Flemish government is also looking to make inspection reports of nurseries more widely available, and to "sanction nurseries that do not put the child first more quickly and, if necessary, close it down more quickly.”
Wouters also commented on the reports that the Antwerp judicial authorities launched an investigation into the death of a nineteen-month-old baby in a childcare centre in Deurne last week, stressing that this incident did not take place in a nursery.
"The child died in a multi-functional centre, where he stayed during the day due to a condition he had."
