On Friday, the Council of State ruled in favour of making it compulsory for independent daycares in French-speaking Belgium to register as companies or non-profit organisations by 2025.
The measure, first proposed in 2020 by the French community's National Office of Birth and Childhood (ONE), could cause many private daycares to close their doors whilst those that remain operational could have to pay significantly more, Le Soir reports.
Since the Council of State's decision on Friday, at least nine daycares (that together have 188 places for children) announced they will close, putting the 282 families that they catered to in difficulty. With 11,000 centres throughout the community, private daycares represent 30% of the childcare facilities in Wallonia-Brussels.
The reform was put forward by ONE in order to establish a child-oriented, accessible, and qualitative provision of care in daycares. The reform establishes qualification norms for personnel as well as setting standards for finance, and ease of access. By registering daycares as either social enterprises or non-profits, the reform aims to create a less commercial economic model for early childhood care.
Until now, private individuals could request authorisation to run a daycare and contract independent workers. The reform means that staff will now have to be directly employed and their company pay higher social security contributions. It will also be mandatory for a daycare administrator to have a bachelor's degree in psychology, social sciences or nursing.
Untenable rates
"The very idea that we could make a mountain of money on the backs of parents and children revolts me", Marie Deboot, Femape member and childcare worker, told Le Soir. Femape is the Belgian federation of private early childhood care facilities.
"Salaries of €500 per month are not uncommon in our sector. We receive no subsidy and must manage to pay all of our costs and charges with the sole participation of the parents."
The reform will also oblige daycares to hire a certain number of supervisors and will prevent daycares from hiring independent childcare workers. "Costs will explode. The daily rate imposed on parents will be untenable," Deboot warned. She argues that the reform will force private daycares to depend on state subsidies, which will undercut long-term stability in the sector.
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Early childhood care in Belgium has been under pressure due to the successive economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the hike in energy prices. Pay for those working in the sector has plummeted since 2o20, driving a chronic staff shortage in the sector. Every week, more and more daycares, both state-subsidized and private, close their doors.
Femape estimates that more than 2,000 children have lost their place in daycares since 2020, as nearly 200 centres closed.
In early June, up to 30 Brussels-based daycares went on strike to protest the worsening work conditions, particularly the lack of personnel which prompts the staff to deal with too many tasks at once. There is one supervisor for every seven children in the system.
Bénédicte Linard, the French-speaking Minister for Early Childhood said that she wants to meet with representatives from the private daycare sector as soon as possible, in order to find solutions, without reversing the reform.