INDEPTH: DAY CARE
A snap shot of child care
The National | February 9, 2005
Most young parents across this country have looked for, stressed over, found, or given up on finding safe and affordable child care. It's an issue that affects more than half of all families with preschool-aged children. There are innovative ideas and successes, but also many challenges.
Montreal, Que.
Reporter: Lynne Robson
Quebec is the province that pioneered universal day care. It promised affordable access for all.
For new mothers fun soon turns to stress as they start the hunt for day care for their babies.
"As soon as I got pregnant, everybody told me you have to call everywhere to be... well, to get a place, because it's very difficult," one mother says.
Difficult because day care in Quebec is suffering from a crisis of popularity.
When many Canadians talk about day care, they talk about day care in Quebec.
This is the model the federal government says other provinces should be following, and why not? Universal day care, high quality care, and it costs parents just $7 a day. Sound too good to be true? For thousands of Quebec families, it is. The problem is everyone wants in. And many day-cares have waiting lists 900 names long.
"We have 30 children who are leaving to go off to kindergarten. Just the brothers and the sisters of kids who are already in the program are filling up those spaces. So we're not even opening our doors to anybody from outside or somebody who may have their first child," says Selina Itzkowitz of CCJ Daycare.
There's always been a waiting list but since universal day care was introduced eight years ago, things are out of control.
"People call us on the phone, where can I find a place for my child. People say how much can I pay you to take my child?" Itzkowitz says.
Veronique Pelletier and her husband have spent a year hunting for day care for their daughter. Now Pelletier's getting desperate.
"I'm going back to work in a month and a half, and for the moment, I only have a spot in a private day care, which is $25 per day. That's the only thing I could find," Pelletier says.
That's just about her only alternative: pricey, for-profit day care. It's a shock for Quebecers whose government brags about its $7-a-day program. But then that $7 label is a bit misleading anyway. Most day-cares charge three or more dollars per day in additional fees for things like supplies. A few places, like the Villeneuve day care, have very low additional fees, under a dollar a day.
But it's difficult, says Marie Trudeau. The government must put more money into the system for us to continue. Universal day care is undeniably expensive.
Before 1997, the Quebec government spent $297 million on day-care subsidies. This year, that cost is $1.4 billion. And still the program is seen as underfunded. "We need money to hire staff, money to fix our building," says Trudeau.
Pelletier and her husband keep searching for affordable day care but they've pretty much lost faith in the Quebec day-care plan.
"I don't think my daughter will ever go to a $7 day-care," Pelletier says.
Quebec's day-care system may be envied by parents in other provinces, just not everyone here. What good, they ask, is a universal program that's out of reach of thousands of families?
Minnedosa, Man.
Reporter: Marisa Dragani
The land has always provided for the people of Minnedosa. This community of nearly 3,000 is made up of families, families who make a living on the land, and those who have left the farm for high-tech jobs in town.
But no matter where you work, the people here in Minnedosa share a dilemma. Who is going to look after the children? With no day-care centre, it's women like Nancy Smith who care for children here. She runs a licensed day-care out of her home.
"They're pretty desperate. When you get hit with a question of what do I do? Where do I take my child? And I can't answer that question," Smith says.
A seat at a day-care table is one of the most coveted in Minnedosa.
Seventeen preschoolers are waiting for a spot.
There are only four other people like Nancy Smith who offer licensed family day care here in Minnedosa, meaning there's only room for 36 kids to get care. People say that comes nowhere close to meeting the real need.
At one time, there were 10 family-run day-cares in town, but most stopped taking in children because they just couldn't make a living at it because the Manitoba government sets the fees. Family day-care operators can only charge $16.40 a day per preschool child, and even with an annual $2,000 operating grant from the province, for many, it just wasn't enough to cover their costs. Now parents in Minnedosa have very few options.
Corinne Topham is a teacher and a mother of three. She'd like to substitute teach a couple of days a week until her kids are all in school full time, but she's been home for the past five years on a day-care waiting list for three.
"I sort of gave up calling," Topham says. "It's just frustrating when you want to go out and get out of the house and do a little bit of work and whatever, that you call and there's nobody that can look after your kids for you."
She can't even get her kids into unlicensed family day-care. Neither her friends nor retired residents are interested in babysitting.
So the Topham family will struggle on one income for at least another two years until Corinne can get back into the work force. For business, attracting people to the workforce is a real challenge because of the day-care crisis.
This is one of the biggest internet pharmacies in the province. It's brought new life to the community, creating countless jobs. Ed Bellehumeur is so desperate to find new employees he's launching a new house-to-house campaign to attract them.
"There are people locally who would apply for employment here if there were better day-care opportunities in the town of Minnedosa," Bellehumeur says.
No question, Minnedosa could really thrive with more day-care spaces. But advocates here insist the answer isn't opening new family day-cares Minnedosa needs to build a day-care centre, and that's what the people here are trying to do.
So far, a group of residents has raised $40,000 and used some of the money to buy this piece of land, but they need much more, nearly half a million dollars more, and day-care advocates like Karen McDonald of the Minnedosa Community Child Care Co-operative says it's up to the federal government to fund projects like this.
"I'd like to see a national program that would also address the other... the infrastructure needs, yes, the capital needs. It's ironic to look at a national child-care policy that might set a standard in terms of the amount of money that we would pay per day for licensed spaces. Unfortunately, when we don't even have any licensed spaces, it's a moot point," McDonald says.
"I feel bad. You don't know where the children are going. You don't know where they're going to end up, and you don't know if they're going to be safe," Smith says.
The hope is for Ottawa to help keep the kids of Minnedosa safe. But until that happens, parents will continue to ask, where do we take our children?
Fredericton, N.B.
Reporter: Sonya Varma
Danielle can't walk, can't feed herself, she barely talks, but at this day-care in Fredericton, she's just one of the gang. Danielle is five years old. She's had cerebral palsy from birth. Finding a day-care to accept her wasn't easy.
"It was very discouraging. It was very discouraging because you feel like you've done something wrong, like you are being shunned from society," says Denise Cormier, Danielle's mother,
Affordable day-care spots are at a premium. Parents must jockey to find a place for their little ones. But the challenge is so much greater when those children have special needs. It took two years of looking before Denise Cormier found The Preschool Centre.
"It was like coming home. It just felt like I had lost the weight of the world really," Cormier says.
The Preschool Centre was the first day-care in the Maritimes to accept children with special needs. It's been their mandate from the get-go. When it first opened in the 1960s, the day-care was located on the campus of the University of New Brunswick. One staff member put in a child who suffered from Down's syndrome. Other faculty members had children who struggled with English.
The day-care has since moved but it still takes advantage of the resources at the university. It gets help from nursing students and other departments.
"The Preschool Centre's been integrated since 1966 so we have a certain level of training that other day-cares may not have had an opportunity to access. And because we've had so many children with disabilities, we've kind of developed an expertise with kids regardless of their needs," says Tracy Law, the director of The Preschool Centre.
The level of care The Preschool Centre offers is an exception. Other day-cares are integrated, but they're typically only equipped to accept children with minor learning difficulties. When it comes to someone like three-year-old Samantha Squires, most other day-care centres would have to turn her away because their staff doesn't have the training required to care for her.
Unlike schools, day-cares are not obligated to take in kids with special needs. Integration does cost more.
For example, for a child like Samantha, the province would pay the day-care $5,000 a year. Squires needs one-on-one attention. She has Prader-Willi syndrome. It means her growth is stunted. So is her ability to learn.
"Samantha right now still can't walk and can't crawl. In fact, this week, she's got casts on both legs trying to straighten her legs so that she can stand up straight," says Brian Squires, Samantha's father.
About 15 per cent of the children in the centre need special attention. When they get it, the payoff is huge.
"Simply eating. I mean, before that, we had to spoon-feed her basically everything. As soon as she gets in here and starts seeing all the other kids feeding themselves, she started reaching for the spoon, wanting to put it to her own mouth," Squires says.
"Kids will ask their parents to have Danielle over for play dates. We would have never had that," Cormier says.
Danielle has also learned her ABCs, her colours, she can even read small words. These are things her mother couldn't teach her, plus Denise says staying at home would put them on the fast-track to poverty.
"Being a two-income home, if one income is eliminated, you're absolutely... you become the working poor. If you're a single parent, you have to... you have to go to social assistance," Cormier says.
The Preschool Centre has given parents like Denise Cormier and Brian Squires the ability to manage. Squires says all day-cares should be integrated.
"It has to happen. She's treated just like all the other children. I mean, I don't see any other way," Squires says.
But they know they're the lucky parents. They found a day-care where all kids can learn, play and be included.
Vancouver, B.C.
Reporter: Natalie Clancy
It's 7:30 a.m., drop-off time at what most consider the cream of the crop of Vancouver day-cares. This centre was built by a condo developer as part of the city's aggressive approach to day care.
"This is definitely one of the day-cares that I think the whole country should look toward for a good example," says parent Tiffany Tsang
In downtown Vancouver, the population has grown 150 per cent in the last five years – an urban baby boom with an explosion of young families. So, in exchange for the permit to build more highrises, the city makes developers build more day-cares
"The developer gets extra bonus, extra density to build higher towers, gets the benefit of building in this area, and the city gets the benefit of having a fully finished child-care centre," says Carol Anne Young of the City of Vancouver.
The city is quite particular about what that centre looks like.
What children think is a slide is in the "gross motor development room." Designing for kids means no hallways, a homey, open concept and an outdoor play space connected to the indoor space. From tiny toilets to furnishings designed to nourish young minds, city officials ensure these spaces work for kids.
"Makes me want to be a three-year-old again!" Young says.
Seven have been built already and another opens in March 2005.
The developers will turn over the keys to the city, and control over to Sandra Menzer's non-profit society. She helped create the city's vision of what a day-care should be.
"Requires almost double the space that the provincial child-care regulations require both for indoor and outdoor spaces. It's very innovative. It describes and holds the developer accountable to ensure that there's good lighting, to ensure that the spaces work really well for kids and it's built on really solid research," says Menzer, of the Vancouver Society of Children's Centres.
Getting these day-cares built and getting the design right is one part of the equation. But there are still two major hurdles for this city program.
One, most families can't afford it and, two, there aren't nearly enough spaces.
Parent Cindy Yu is one of the lucky ones.
"I signed up when I was three months pregnant. That was only because the day before I was researching on the internet about day-care spaces in Vancouver, and I had read that it can take 18 to 24 months," Yu says.
"We have 1,400 children on our waiting list. We know there are that many more that aren't on our waiting list because they couldn't afford the fee," Menzer says.
Only about 15 per cent of the city's children are in this level of child care. They're the ones who can afford it.
"When Julia started, we were paying somewhere around 900-plus dollars, and we had two children. That's a lot of money," Derek Wyszynski says.
While the city gets the facility for free, parents still pay $992 a month for a child under three and $650 for older kids. Too much even for those on assistance.
"Families have to pay a difference between the fee and the subsidy of about $400. Most families on limited incomes or modest incomes, this would be far out of their reach," Young says.
Workers here worry about all the other families getting by with a patchwork of grandparents, neighbours and many forms of unlicensed child care, forced by economics to settle for babysitting instead of child development.
Toronto
Reporter: Kas Roussy
Four-year-old Maxim Scott doesn't know it. Neither does his pal Jax Chomniak, but the tykes are part of a bold experiment going on in Toronto.
It's called First Duty, and the project is a team approach to early learning years. It involves kindergarten teachers collaborating on programs and activities with early childhood educators. The closer ties provide a seamless service, and parents are sold.
Glen Chomniak, Jax's father, says, "When I come in in the morning, I see the entire staff, and I talk to them, and I get to know them. We have a dialogue and a rapport. That's really important because you want to feel like you're leaving your child with someone you know."
Here's how this program stands out, how it differs from the more conventional early learning centres. As soon as the child enters this school, the entire day is spent under one roof. There's no bouncing from child-care to kindergarten and back again. It's one stop the entire day.
For half a day, the focus is on academics, with the emphasis on reading, writing, mathematics. But First Duty is all about making learning fun. There are no structured classrooms here.
"You have so many more educators and so many more supports available to you whereas if you went into another kindergarten class, the possibility is that there's one teacher with 25 children and that's it. So you're really limited in the number of activities and the resources that you have available to you in terms of people," says Sandy White, a kindergarten teacher.
By the afternoon, Lori Grey steps in. She's the early childhood educator. This part of the day takes on a more playful tone.
"It has the early childhood educators coming together with the kindergarten teachers and coming together to provide this all-day program that will meet all the needs of the children in every aspect," Grey says.
Parents are involved, encouraged even, to drop by. For example, a father entertains the group. In fact, there's a parent resource centre on site. It all adds up to a pretty stress-free experience for everyone involved.
"You know, you don't have to go to the stress or anxiety of finding someone to pick the child up and taking them to the private baby sitter or the alternative day-care that's off site. He's here. It's consistent. He loves it. It's the same room, same environment," Ena Maxam, one of the mothers, says.
At the end of the day, it appears that the children are the real winners here. So far, research shows that children graduating from the First Duty program are better prepared to take on the rest of the schooling experience.
^TOP
|
|
 |
 MENU |
|
|
| EXTERNAL LINKS: |
|
|
| MORE: |
|
|
|
CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in new window.
