Lisa Jordan - Bernard van Leer Foundation
HomeVerhalenKinderopvang en de Nederlandse verkiezingen
HomeVerhalenKinderopvang en de Nederlandse verkiezingen

Kinderopvang en de Nederlandse verkiezingen

Deze blog is alleen beschikbaar in het Engels. It’s election time in the Netherlands. On September 12th the Dutch will cast their votes with the euro crisis at the top of their minds. However daycare has also surfaced as one of the main topics in the political debates. All parties, in part through talks with BvLF, have expressed their desire to reverse the budget cuts planned for 2013 which would make quality daycare a luxury even fewer parents can afford.

Lisa Jordan - Bernard van Leer Foundation

Deze blog is alleen beschikbaar in het Engels

It’s election time in the Netherlands. On September 12th the Dutch will cast their votes with the euro crisis at the top of their minds. However daycare has also surfaced as one of the main topics in the political debates. All parties, in part through talks with BvLF, have expressed their desire to reverse the budget cuts planned for 2013 which would make quality daycare a luxury even fewer parents can afford.

While we welcome the change of heart, reversing budget cuts is not enough. It is only the first step in a complete overhaul of the child care system that is necessary to allow all young children in the Netherlands to develop to their full potential.

As you may recall I talked about improving the quality of child care in The Netherlands in a previous message last year. It is crazy that a country that depends on a knowledge economy does not have a comprehensive structure to support the development of young children. Childcare in the Netherlands is mostly focused on safety and health and geared toward those families with working parents. There is very little attention to the developmental needs of the 800,000 young children in daycare, but children need to learn and develop in the early years. Daycare should be about much more than merely taking care of kids while their parents are at work.

Through the campaign Kies nu voor Kinderen (Choose Kids Now) we aim to introduce the right to learning and development for all children from ages 0 to 12. Such a right would honor the freedom of choice Dutch parents value to make their own decision about what is right for their children. At the same time it would create access to quality daycare for young children from parents who do not work or have lower incomes.

Best of all, from a government perspective, by making the childcare system more efficient our proposals would actually save money. In partnerhship with Kinderopvangfonds, another funder passionate about childcare reform, we asked the independent economic research bureau SEO Economisch Onderzoek to conduct a cost benefit analysis of the measures that we propose in the Kies nu voor Kinderen campaign.

That research has demonstrated that greater access and better quality daycare for young children in the Netherlands would generate €11 million euros of savings to the government and €237 million euros of savings to parents, adding up to €248 million euros of savings per annum for Dutch society.

And that figure does not take into account the future returns we can expect from investing in our young children. As we know from Nobel prize winning economist James Heckman, ‘If you are looking for a public policy that promotes social justice and at the same time promotes productivity in the economy and in society at large, investing in disadvantaged young children is such a policy. ‘

Investing in a time of crisis is usually a hard to sell to politicians. The question politicians always ask is ‘where’s the money?’’ But in this case, we have proposed measures that actually save money by developing a comprehensive vision of daycare so it is focused on the optimal development of the youngest citizens.

Reforming daycare into a comprehensive system of child development centres that are accessible for all children will help to limit the impacts of the euro crisis to the here and now, and lay the foundations for future prosperity. Een sterke start voor kinderen is een sterke toekomst voor Nederland (a strong start for children is a strong future for the Netherlands).

By Lisa Jordan, Executive Director, 6 September 2012

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