"Geweldige opvang. Aardige mensen en duidelijk in hun communicatie! Ze zijn goed voor de kinderen"

"Mijn zoontje heeft ruim 2,5 jaar met veel plezier bij dit kinderdagverblijf gespeeld. Een mooie locatie met lieve vaste leidsters op Zijn groep. Met een leuk aanbod aan activiteiten en tussen de middag een warme maaltijd. En bij vragen in de opvoeding denken en kijken ze graag met je mee, in oplossingen zo fijn. Wij kijken terug op een hele fijne tijd die ons zoontje op Willemspoort gehad heeft. Wij raden dit kinderdagverblijf dan ook zeker aan."

"The intent of this review is not to tarnish the image of Eigenwize Willemspoort as a whole. On the other hand, I merely want to warn parents with babies who may fall in the same bracket as mine. As is the case with any daycare, we had an intake meeting. We had specifically mentioned that my 6 month old had trouble falling asleep, and that rocking and shushing are an integral part of the sleeping routine. This process in itself always took around 10-15 minutes at home. Our query during intake was “How do you deal with such babies usually?”. To this, the response was “We usually work with an expert with whom the situation is evaluated and a plan is formed, to help improve the sleeping situation”. This gave us the confidence that the daycare will “help” in the training process and we decided to proceed with it (we had other daycares lined up). The only request from Eigenwijze Willemspoort was that my baby should be eased in to the daycare routine. So for the first few weeks, my baby would go in for a few hours (while paying for the whole day of course) and then gradually move towards a full day routine. This easing in process took quite long, and in the 2-3 months that my baby was at Eigenwijze Willemspoort, we ended up using the daycare full time for only 2 weeks. Despite this, after about 2 months of starting daycare here, I got a call from the person in charge. I was asked to come along with my partner for a meeting to discuss plans to help improve my baby’s sleeping routine. The message was that the caregivers and parents need a coherent sleeping routine to help the baby. We arrived on the agreed day with a lot of hope, and this is verbatim how they opened the meeting. “We think your baby should stop coming to daycare here” The cited reason was that they do not have the staff or time to accommodate my baby’s sleeping needs. As parents, we were flabbergasted, frustrated and felt let down. Any parent in Netherlands would be aware of the fact that finding a solution in the short term for such a situation is extremely difficult and nerve wracking. I decided to involve the GGD and that provided some “respite”. The daycare decided to have a sort of probationary period for my baby with the following unfair rules. “Starting tomorrow, your baby will be merely put in bed to sleep without any further assistance. If crying persists and it ends up disturbing the other babies, then you need to take your baby back home. We will do this for a month and then evaluate if your baby can continue here” For my baby whose first nap was at 9am then, this meant we will start daycare at 7:30am earliest, and then stop after 1.5 hours, because my baby was definitely not going to magically learn how to sleep in a day. An unfair proposition compounded by the fact that we had to keep paying for the entire day meant that we were left with no option but to cancel the contract. To no surprise, it seemed like this was the outcome they were waiting for, because they immediately agreed to cancel the contract without any notice period. Not a single person I spoke to could believe that a daycare could take such a harsh step against a baby. In hindsight, I’m glad this happened because after a period of struggle without any daycare, my baby is now in good hands at another daycare, and the caregivers there know how to handle babies with sleeping troubles. In short, if your baby has sleeping issues that require dedicated care/routine to help him/her sleep, then I would advise you to think it through before deciding to send your baby here."