Premiers Pas: The new platform to help parents find a nursery in Brussels

The Office of Birth and Childhood (ONE) presented on Friday: “First steps” (Premiers pas), a new platform that can geo-locate nurseries and filter them according to different criteria such as rates or opening hours. This tool will make life easier for parents as well as future parents because it will help the authorities to prioritize their needs, said Minister for Children, Alda Gréoli.

The platform, accessible at the address my.one.be, offers to look for a nursery, a home-based host or any type of reception environment according to several criteria like the postal code, the tariffs (subsidized structure or not), the opening hours, the number of carers, children or the type of organization of the ages. For each hosting environment, the site indicates its registration service, its organization’s structure, and its contact details.

The nursery that so wish can specify if they are full and from when places will be available, as well as other elements like their educational project, the existence or not of a garden, etc.

The exact amount requested per day is not yet filled in but these and other data will be added gradually. “This is a collaborative platform, initiated with parents and host communities taking into account the expectations of parents,” said the head of the Home Department of ONE, Dominique Fievez.

Its goal is also to simplify relations between the ONE and the host communities as well as to help the public authorities better identify the places where the lack of places for children is the most obvious, she added.

“First steps(Premiers pas) is the name of a website but also the first steps of a much larger movement to make life easier for parents and, at the same time, help us with other projects thanks to all of the collected data,” said Alda Gréoli. Under this legislature, 5,000 reception places have been created and a new call for projects will be launched, said the minister.