now that thousands Ontario Families are paying reduced child care fees under the national $10-a-day program, work is underway to ensure equal and greater access to affordable care – with those in the region seeking workforce retention and home point to daycare as a key to expansion.
Ontario reached its March 2022 agreement with the federal government to create 86,000 new positions, and as it counts positions that have been open since 2019, it has about 50,000 more to go.
The government is now consulting on its expansion plan and the municipalities should create spaces in the Peel area with the largest number – 7,621 – which the government says is due to a large and rapidly growing population, as well as socioeconomic indicators.
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Municipalities must now identify priority neighborhoods for new locations, especially to support low-income families, diverse communities, francophone and indigenous families, and those who require overnight or weekend care .
According to a provincial memo obtained by The Canadian Press, the numbers are roughly based on a target ratio of one affordable child care space for every 2.7 children under the age of five.
“Working toward this ratio would significantly reduce disparities in child care access across the province,” the government wrote in a memo to municipal child-care service managers.
Ontario calculated space allocations using factors such as demographic data and existing licensed child-care capacity. A portion of the spaces are intended to increase access to certain populations, including single-parent families, low-income families, recent immigrants and many women between the ages of 25 and 44 who are not in the labor force .
Morna Ballantyne, executive director of the advocacy group Child Care Now, said the availability of spaces varies so widely now because there was no comprehensive plan before.
He said in an interview, “Licensed child care exists where individuals or organizations, whether they are entrepreneurs or non-profit organizations, have just decided to open a licensed child care facility.”
“Whenever you have a market-based system, and especially one that is supposed to provide an essential service like early childhood education, you have very unequal supply, inadequate supply, and often very expensive supply.”
Ballantyne said municipalities should be more involved in providing child care directly, setting up centres.
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That’s what Russell Township is doing in Eastern Ontario. The small, fast-growing municipality southeast of Ottawa – its population set to grow by about 20 per cent from 2016 to 2021 – is taking 186 positions from a private daycare that closed during the pandemic.
Mayor Pierre Leroux said, “We’re on the outskirts of Ottawa, the houses tend to be a little more affordable.” “So, young families are moving out to affordable housing, and then having kids and (it) doesn’t take long to realize that there aren’t many daycare spots here.”
The township also recently approved a 20 percent pay raise for child-care staff in an effort to recruit and retain teachers. Leroux said her community is experiencing a similar shortage of child care workers across the province.
Strengthening the workforce is a key part of the current government’s consultation, with officials saying the province will be short of 8,500 registered early childhood teachers by 2026 without new measures.
Meanwhile, the sector is already facing a shortage of staff. Government documents say the number of RECEs in licensed child care is set to decrease by seven percent between 2019 and 2021.
Diane Daly, CEO of Family Day, which has both center and home-based daycare in the Greater Toronto Area, said the workforce is one of the most pressing issues.
“If we’re going to get this expansion, we have to address this issue with employee retention, hiring, pay, benefits, and so on,” she said.
Daly also notes that home-based child-care could allow the province to add locations faster than the centres.
“As long as we have caregivers, it can be scaled up fairly quickly, and it doesn’t require the same capital investment as a center-based setting,” she said.
“We are supporters of both. We believe families should have options. But this is where I believe licensed home child care … will be critical to supporting expansion in our communities.”
Daly said licensed home daycares are also well equipped to offer care outside of traditional hours. The province wants to see an expansion of evening, weekend and overnight child care to benefit parents who work shifts. Currently, less than one percent of centers offer evening or overnight care, while home daycare accounts for eight to 12 percent.
Trevor Fowler, director of child care and early years in London, Ontario, said the city is looking at whether this could create an incentive for more home-based care, as those locations can outgrow more quickly and Can walk
In London, and other municipalities, the next steps in expansion are studying demographics and consulting with community members.
“It’s not about expansion to nowhere, it’s about targeted expansion,” Fowler said.
“It is about helping to better serve disadvantaged communities. Right now our data, it tells us where people live and that’s great. But knowing where they live is not the same as knowing where they want their child care, or what they want.
A spokesman for Education Minister Stephen Leese said the government is providing more than $200 million in start-up grants to help build new spaces and increase the capacity of child care providers in underserved areas.
Once the province creates 50,000 vacancies, it may not be nearly enough.
Ontario’s Office of Fiscal Responsibility calculated that increased demand for affordable care would leave the province short of more than 220,000 places. The province is open to ideas for more aggressive development.
“In recognition of the current and anticipated driven demand for affordable child care, service system managers are also invited to share information regarding additional capacity for development,” the government said in its memo to municipalities.