Child and Family

Kind en Gezin, together with its partners, aims to create as many opportunities as possible for all children and young people, including their families, who grow up in Flanders and Brussels.

This Flemish service focuses on preventive treatment and guidance of young children geared to good outcomes in the future. We work hard to enable children to achieve their full developmental potential, physically, mentally, emotionally and socially, with respect for diversity and children’s rights. This principle holds good for all the different areas that we work in.
Kind en Gezin is responsible for:

• registration of high quality child care;
• optimal support for parents-to-be and parents with young children;
• the criteria that adoption agencies have to meet.

We closely monitor all changes in society as a matter of course. Day in day out we come into contact with thousands of families and work with partners and other actors in the field. This gives us a wealth of information, allowing us to respond proactively and at the most appropriate time. We develop scientific methods, in both educational and medical fields, to assist us in our work. We constantly adapt our services, so that we can offer every parent and every child the best help possible. We also participate in national and international campaigns and projects: with boundless respect for every child and for the rights of the child.

Kind en Gezin (Child and Family), Jongerenwelzijn (Youth Welfare) and part of the offer of the Vlaams Agentschap voor Personen met een Handicap (VAPH, Flemish Agency for Persons with Disabilities) together form a new agency: Opgroeien (Growing up). 

The agency is joining forces to create as many opportunities as possible for all children and young people, including their families, who grow up in Flanders and Brussels. Katrien Verhegge heads the new agency, together with two managing directors: Bruno Vanobbergen and Inge Kinnaer. 

The new agency’s service provision ranges from preventive family support, childcare, the Growth Package, foster care, adoption, youth support and the approach to juvenile delinquents. The Growing Up Agency explicitly opts for an integrated, multidisciplinary approach in cooperation with a large number of partners. In this way, families are given maximum support.