Rise in dangerous daycare incidents may be linked to staff shortages

The number of dangerous incidents in childcare has grown considerably in the past year, according to figures from the complaints department Klachtenloket Kinderopvang. According to experts, the increase is due to severe staff shortages and high absenteeism, AD reports.

Many childcare groups are filled to the max with too few carers to look after the children. The result is extreme pressure on the permanent staff, causing high absenteeism. “Children increasingly often see changing faces instead of the regular teacher who knows them inside and out,” Ruben Fukkink, a professor on childcare, told the newspaper. “This increases the risk of incidents.”

Childcare employees confirm the problems. In a survey by Kinderopvang Totaal among 700 employees this week, over half said the number of incidents is increasing. They list examples like forgotten food and medication, children falling out of their beds or from the toilet, hot soup spilling over a child, and a child sent home with the wrong grandparents.

The Klachtenloket Kinderopvang received 78 reports of unsafe situations at childcare organizations between January and April. That is much higher than the three preceding quarters when it received 54, 41, and 24 complaints, respectively. “Over the past four quarters, there has been a significant increase in the number of reports about unsafe situations,” Sybright van Atten of the complaints department said. “One can think of children who have run away, children who fell off somewhere, or too little supervision at locations due to, for example, staff shortages.”

AD found several examples of dangerous incidents at daycare centers this year. On March 10, a toddler died in a “medical incident” at De Toverburcht in Arnhem. In early April, a child drowned at the Kraaltje daycare center in Huizen. Later that month, a trauma helicopter rushed a toddler to UMC Groningen after he nearly drowned at his daycare. And a 3-year-old ran away from Happy Kids in Weert. A local saw the child wandering the streets and called the police.

BOink, the interest organization for parents in childcare, is not surprised. “We have been warning for a year about an increase in incidents, and we fear that this is only the tip of the iceberg,” chairman Gjalt Jellesma told AD. BOink attributes the problems to staff shortages and too many interns working in childcare. Due to the shortages, the government changed the rules in January 2022 to allow half the staff to be trainees. Previously it was a third.

“Such measures that increase the risk of unsafe situations should never have been introduced, we believe,” Jellesma said. “We have since repeatedly warned the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment about this. We also wrote to parliament about it.”

Despite the increase in incidents, childcare in the Netherlands is still very safe, professor Fukking stressed. The Netherlands has almost 17,000 childcare organizations caring for about 635,000 children. Fukking advocates thoroughly investigating each incident to prevent similar ones in the future. He also called it good that the Cabinet postponed making childcare free due to staff shortages.