By Sabine Klier
Since September 2022, the educator Katja L. (34) from Prenzlauer Berg has been looking for a place in a kindergarten for her son Leonhard (3). So far in vain. Your son suffers from cystic fibrosis and needs help going to the toilet. Now she wants to sue for the daycare place.
“Most of the time it’s said that there aren’t enough staff to look after my son,” explains the mother.
She and her husband Jens (47) have written 17 applications since last August and have only received rejections.
Katja L., who studied German, came to Berlin from the Ukraine about ten years ago. And decided to do teacher training. She worked in an AWO day care center in Friedrichshain for four years. “After our son was born, I took parental leave,” she explains. “But after I couldn’t find a daycare place for him, I quit.”
Leonhard suffers from cystic fibrosis. He is well adjusted to medication. “But if he wants to go to the toilet, a kindergarten teacher has to accompany him so that the toilet is closed before the flush and the sink is plugged before washing his hands so that he doesn’t inhale the germ-laden aerosols.” Leonard’s integration status allows his future daycare center , to get a teacher position 25 percent financed by the state.
Most recently, Katja L. applied together with her son. “I have an impeccable resume and I offered my immediate work if my child got a place at daycare,” she says. “But I got the answer that mother and child could not be in the same daycare center.”
Katja is desperate: “I urgently need to go back to work. We cannot live on just one income and our savings will soon run out.”
Now the couple wants to sue for the allocation of a suitable daycare place in the civil court. “And claim my wife’s lost wages. After all, she can’t work without supervision,” says Jens L. The lawsuit costs 2,000 euros.