Quality committee

Since 1998 a quality committee is active at Dikkedeur. This committee makes sure all quality issues continuously remain in sight. The tasks and operations are divers: developing instruments for the benefit of quality, periodically sampling on different aspects of quality, developing targeted quality policies such as ‘treat-policy’ (traktatiebeleid), ‘toy-policy’ (speelgoedbeleid), or setting up and managing a speelotheek (library for toys) and library.
The committee consists of active and competent pedagogic employees from day-care and BSO (out-of school care), supervised by staff member: Rimke Willeman.

Team meetings

At least 4 times a year the quality committee organises thematic team meetings for all pedagogic employees. The subjects/themes of choice always have a direct or indirect link to the practise of work.  Some examples are: communication, toys, the ‘kindvolgsysteem’, health & safety, professional feedback, acting in a child-oriented way, working in units.

Risk assessment

Each year all sites of Dikkedeur are subject to a risk assessment and evaluation. If necessary, this is followed by a scheduled plan of improvement.

Placement company

Dikkedeur puts a lot of effort in internships and is a recognised learning company (leerbedrijf), for mbo and hbo. In a recent quick scan by Calibris (the national organisation for learning in practice and the organisation responsible for issuing permits for training companies) we again received two thumbs up for our internship mentoring. The staff of quality at Dikkedeur is responsible for updating and executing the internship policy.

Online parental satisfaction

We are always interested in knowing what parents think of our care. We have been working on that in several ways since 1998, at first by distributing surveys and processing the data ourselves, then by hiring an external company. That company only asked very general and standard questions on which nearly all day-care centres were rated as sufficient or good. Moreover, the response of parents was negligible.
We are now investigating new possibilities to try this again, in our own way. A questionnaire is in preparation with items specifically concerning Dikkedeur (so no more insignificant questions) that will be continuously available online. This way Dikkedeur hopes to receive concrete information about herself from which she can benefit.