Concerns about the quality of childcare may also hinder parents’ willingness to place their children in care. Childcare facilities are professional organisations, and may be commercially exploited (with shareholders expecting dividends) or without profit (like by associations or foundations). Since parents may not be able to judge the quality that facilities provide, and market imperfections may have serious consequences for the quality, government needs to ensure that quality criteria are developed and adhered to. The Childcare Act already includes a quality criteria but there are also plans to further increase quality of childcare provisions by 2017.
The privatisation of the childcare market (Childcare Act of 2005) saw the market develop from public and supply driven to private and demand driven. It ended the fragmentation in the market, since both municipalities and employers provided childcare. In addition, it addressed the problem of the waiting lists.

The aim of the Dutch government’s law and policies on childcare is twofold, and equal in importance: stimulating labour force participation of parents by making it easier to combine work and care tasks, as well as providing a
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safe developmental environment for young children. The policy aims at stimulating working parents, and in particular working mothers, to continue or increase their participation in the labour market by supervising the quality and providing publicly available information on the quality of childcare facilities.
The policy is built on the two main pillars of the 2005 Childcare Act: ‘parental choice’ (enabling parents to choose in which childcare facility they place their children) and ‘competition’ (privatisation of childcare leading to competition on quality and price as a result of market forces).

• The Child Care Act set the overall, high-level quality criteria all childcare facilities must adhere to.
• Detailed criteria were established with parents’ organisations and organisations of childcare facilities in convenants and issued as regulations.
• Municipalities were responsible for supervising compliance. The GGD officers carry out announced and unannounced inspections on site using standard checklists. The law requires that each childcare facility is inspected yearly.
• Upon a positive inspection, the municipality registered the facility in a public register: Landelijk Register Kinderopvang en Peuterspeelzalen.
• 7 domains of quality were defined.

1. organisation (professional, developmental environment, ownership);

2. parents’ involvement (parents’ committee, information exchange, advisory role, complaints management);
3. personnel (qualifications, Verklaring Omtrent Gedrag (VOG) (Declaration on Behaviour), language skills);
4. safety and health (inventory of risks, action plan for accidents, child abuse protocol);
5. accommodation (minimum 3.5 m2 inside and 3 m2 outside per child, adequately furnished);
6. group size and child-staff ratio (calculation tool provided on government website);
7. education policy (emotional and social development plans, norms and values).

Non-compliance leads to official warnings to address the shortcomings and ultimately deletion from the National Register. Non registered childcare is marked as illegal childcare
Working parents were only eligible for childcare subsidies for children placed in registered care facilities for a maximum amount of EUR 6.84 (for day care centres) per hour. Amounts charged above the maximum would have to be borne by the parents themselves. The maximum number of hours of childcare, eligible for compensation, is 230 hours per month per child.

• The joint reforms since 2005 increased the maternal employment rate by 2.3%-points (3%) over the period 2005-2009 (CPB: Bettendorf, L.J.H. et al. 2014).
• Overall net labour participation rate of women with children remained rather stable from 2009-2014 (MinSoZaWe Brief 1). For mothers with a partner it went up from 69.2% (2009) to 70.4% (2014). For single mothers it decreased from 61.6% to 56.2%, and for mothers with young children (0-11 years old) it remained stable (from 70.2% to 69.9%).
• Akgunduz, Y.E. and Plantenga, J. (2014) concluded that in terms of quality, competition seems to have a positive impact on quality but the evidence is mixed.
• In addition, Akgunduz, Y.E. and Plantenga, J. (2014) concluded that in a regulated environment childcare markets might do quite well in terms of meeting demand and keeping prices stable.
• Quality has suffered over the past 20 years, not as a result of the privatisation as such but rather due to the rapid growth of childcare combined with shortages of qualified personnel and higher work pressure (Akgunduz, Y.E. and Plantenga, J. (2014).