It is one of the first things that Suzanne van Duijn (34) from Utrecht arranges when she turns out to be pregnant: registering with a childcare organization. “I heard from friends who had just become parents that you really had to be on time,” she says over the phone. She doesn’t know her name or gender yet. “I registered it as ‘neuter baby’.”
She laughs when she says that at the time she looked critically at which organization she dared leave her future child behind with confidence. “I called especially with all kinds of questions. Now I am happy if he can go anywhere at all.”
Because despite the fact that she registered son Storm later in her pregnancy with three other organizations just to be safe, she still has no view of a place now, five months after his birth. “He will not be able to go until the beginning of 2023 at the earliest.”
To solve this problem, Van Duijn only works 2.5 days a week as an independent entrepreneur coach instead of 5. Her partner worked 4 days a week at a webshop. Now he is taking parental leave, which entitles him to 70 percent of his salary for nine weeks. “That means he has an extra day off every week. We arrange it together with the help of grandparents.”
The enormous staff shortages in childcare increasingly stress parents. Arranging a place is not only difficult. Even once you are inside, the situation remains uncertain. In the past period, several childcare organizations canceled current contracts with parents when staff dropped out and they could not find new people.
A forecast by Kinderopvang Werken, a collaboration of industry organizations and trade unions, shows that 32,000 extra workers will be needed in childcare over the next five years: 9,000 due to an increase in the number of babies and another 23,000 due to current government policy.
“As of January 1, the rule will disappear that the number of hours of childcare that you are reimbursed from the government is linked to the number of hours that you work. In theory, someone who works one hour a week could receive childcare for five days. As a result, we expect an increase in demand,” says Emmeline Bijlsma, director of Brancheorganisatie Kinderopvang BK. As of 1 January 2025, childcare will also become virtually free. From then on, working parents will be reimbursed 95 percent of childcare costs, regardless of what they earn. “That too is expected to lead to more requests, while the capacity is not there. This means that even more parents will be put on waiting lists for even longer,” says Bijlsma.
Wait four years
Currently, 90 percent of daycare centers (0-4 years) work with a waiting list, according to research by Kinderopvang Werken. In out-of-school care, 77 percent of the organizations have a waiting list and the number of organizations with a waiting list also increased to 56 percent in pre-school care (for children aged 2-4 years).
It is difficult to say how long parents have to wait on average. Bijlsma: “That depends on where you live, on which days you want childcare – most people want on Monday, Tuesday and/or Thursday – and whether you have a preference for a specific organization or not. The problem is huge, especially in and around large cities, although waiting times are increasing all over the country. We regularly hear that parents have nowhere to go towards the end of their leave,” says Bijlsma. She points to a place like Weesp, where many young families have come to live in the new residential area of Weespersluis, while there are hardly any childcare places. “There parents have to deal with a waiting list of four years.”
There are hardly any alternatives to regular childcare. There is also too much demand and too little supply in guest parent care (small-scale childcare, usually at the guest parent’s home), says Gabriëlla Wijnberg of the branch organization for guest parent care Stichting Nysa. “As a result, there is a gray circuit of people and companies that offer babysitting services. There is no supervision of the quality requirements and the safety of the children and there is no maximum for the number of children that can be cared for. That is asking for trouble.”
Taking parental leave
A 39-year-old coordinator at a secondary school, who lives in a new residential area in a small suburban village, also had to deal with long waiting times. She does not want her name in the newspaper, because she hopes to have a chance at a place at the only childcare organization in the village (her name is known to the editors). She enrolled her daughter in it when she was three weeks pregnant. “My parents didn’t even know.”
A week before her leave, her daughter was unable to attend childcare. “Fortunately, she was able to go to a place further down the road, close to my work. Just to be sure, I registered her for after-school care, because I didn’t want the same situation again.” But when she inquired six months ago whether her daughter could go to that after-school care after the summer holidays, she was still not at the top of the waiting list.
She is forced to take parental leave and her partner works from home a lot. “In my position you have to be present for at least four days. I solved that by working two full days and two half days. My wife works full-time at a large bank and fortunately has an understanding employer. She brings and collects our daughter from school every day and often makes up for work that she doesn’t get to in the afternoons in the evening. We’ll make it, but it’s far from ideal. My parental leave is also running out. If she can’t go to after-school care, I see no more solutions. We have no family who can help and there are no childminders in this neighborhood either.”
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According to the employers’ organization VNO-NCW, employers are increasingly realizing that they may experience problems in childcare and are taking action. Recently, “a large company” inquired at branch organization BK what is needed to set up its own childcare, says director Bijlsma. Childcare organization Kindergarden, with 71 locations in the Netherlands, is also regularly called by companies that inquire about possibilities to reduce stress around childcare among employees. Although no concrete agreements have yet been made, discussions are being held, says director Nicole Krabbenborg: “They are usually large companies with 1000+ employees. They want to know: can we purchase shelters? Is it possible to arrange priority on the waiting list? Can you do something about childcare in unforeseen situations, such as a sick babysitter, a forced quarantine, the closure of a group or that really important but unexpected business meeting? I only expect more such requests in the future.”
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Photo Dieuwertje Bravenboer
Babysitter of the case
Companies also approach the Charly Cares babysitting platform with questions. During the lockdowns in times of corona, they started the ‘Babysitter of the business’ industry, to which about eighty companies, including Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group and Van Doorne, are now affiliated. Companies annually purchase an average of 60 to 100 babysitting hours, which employees can use to book a babysitter via the Charly Cares platform. “Some employers are now turning that stopgap solution into something for the long term, in the form of fringe benefits. Before the summer holidays, employers often mentioned the work pressure or work-life balance of parents as reasons, but since a few weeks the need in childcare has been increasingly mentioned. Not as the main reason, but as an extra boost to arrange something now if employees really get into trouble,” says founder Charly van der Straten.
For the time being, it is mainly parents themselves who have to puzzle to complete childcare. Suzanne van Duijn from Utrecht is lucky enough to be able to organize her own work as an independent entrepreneur. “By working more efficiently, I now earn the same in less time. If I had been employed and had no parents to help out, my friend and I would not have known how to solve this.” If a place actually becomes available in the childcare at the beginning of 2023, she wants to expand its activities again. By then, son Storm will be just under a year old.