Working parents could leave their toddlers in safe hands for just over 8 guilders – around €3.60 – per half-day; students paid only 3.75 guilders. To keep costs down, the place was run by volunteers. “Most were mothers or wives of employees who wanted something to do. Later, women on benefits also joined through the volunteer centre.” According to the archives, the Executive Board’s support of the project was less a luxury than a necessity. Local nurseries were full and only accepted the most urgent cases.
From the outset, the university nursery was meant to move into the main RL building on Tongersestraat. For unknown reasons, that plan was dropped, and the municipality stepped in, offering space in the former nursery of the Ravelijn Community Centre. The childcare centre (including for children of Maastricht Academic Hospital) was aptly named “’t Ravelijntje”. Later, it moved again to Louis Looyenstraat near Wilhelmina Bridge.
The childcare centre may have opened, but it was never plain sailing. Observant ran story after story about long waiting lists, tight budgets and cramped premises. Demands for more financial support from the Executive Board never really went away. It was a win-win for the institutions, argued Sjef Wintgens, head of the Education Office of Health Sciences and chair of the RL/azM Childcare Association, in October 1988. “Investing in childcare is also in their own interests.” Staff, particularly women, would be less likely to quit their jobs, he reasoned.
In 1990, the university nursery merged with the Juliana childcare centre after the municipality decided to work with a single provider, prompted by new childcare benefits regulations. From then on, it was no longer exclusively for university and hospital staff families. Still, for years the university continued ‘to purchase’ childcare places at what later became MIK Tailor-made Childcare.
Was the idea of a UM nursery 2.0 ever raised again? Yes, in 2019, when UM became the first university in the Netherlands to be awarded a “family-friendly” certificate by the German consultancy firm Beruf und Familie (the certificate, valid for three years, was never renewed; HR and the Student Services Centre took over various initiatives to support students and staff with caring responsibilities).
The possibility of launching a UM nursery was explored, but it’s all very complicated, explains Netty Bekkers of the Diversity & Inclusivity Office, then involved with the family-friendly project. “Childcare is a business, and is in many ways at odds with an educational institution.”