Parents put off by daycare fee hikes
Increases follow rate-cutting plan
The B.C. government says it will investigate licensed child-care providers that hiked fees just before the launch of a provincial program aimed at saving parents money.
The move follows complaints from parents who are upset that they won’t receive those savings after some providers raised their tuition before the April 1 launch.
Under the child-care fee-reduction program, part of the province’s billion-dollar child-care plan promised in the 2018 budget, parents were told they could get up to $350 knocked off their monthly bill if their daycare opted in.
The government said this week that it will investigate providers that hiked fees in the months before the program and, if any of the increases are unreasonable, the daycare may lose its eligibility for the fee-reduction program.
Some parents, frustrated after the CEFA Early Learning chain of daycares raised rates in February, started a petition at change.org to pressure the owner to give all the extra money to its staff.
CEFA told parents their fees would jump by 10 to 15 per cent, which for some meant an extra $200 or more a month, beginning in March. CEFA said it was giving all the money to its teachers, but a CTV investigation found that owner Natacha Beim would continue to take six per cent in royalties from the pay increase.
In another letter to families, which was posted on the petition site, Beim pledged to put all the royalties back into education. She says the hike is intended to provide a living wage for her teachers.
CEFA is not the only daycare provider to hike fees after the fee-reduction program was announced. Several parents wrote to Postmedia to voice disappointment over the timing of a five per cent rate surge at Kids & Company, a daycare franchise with operations throughout Metro Vancouver.
Port Moody parent Bruno Jury said he was disappointed that the government announced savings for families, but said they won’t see much of a difference on their bill, adding it seemed “shady” to bring in rate hikes just as parents were expecting a break.
The company’s director of sales and marketing, Linda Starr, said the company is trying to stay competitive in a province with an extreme shortage of child-care workers, and suggested that five per cent is fair given other increases by similar private operators.
She added that 100 per cent of the increase will go to staff wages.
An official at the B.C. Ministry of Children and Families said the primary goal of the government program is to reduce costs for parents.
If a provider has increased fees by unusually high amounts in the seven months before enrolment in the plan, the ministry will investigate.
“If it is deemed to be an unreasonable increase, the provider may be ineligible to participate, as the enhanced funding will not be passed on to parents as intended,” the official wrote in an email.
Sharon Gregson, a child-care advocate, said providers that hiked fees may decide to reduce them after speaking with government. In one case, an operator in Terrace who raised fees by $350 agreed to reduce them to opt in to the program, she said.
Others have decided not to opt in and have raised their fees. That has left parents like Jenny Zhang searching for another daycare.
Zhang, whose 15-month-old son goes to Bluebird daycare in North Vancouver, received a letter on Tuesday saying the company would not opt in over concerns the government will be unable to meet timelines in issuing the subsidized funds. In addition, Zhang’s daycare fees will go up $55 a month.
The mother of two, who works as an executive assistant in Vancouver, said she is “extremely frustrated” and has contacted 10 daycares in her area with no luck finding a space that works for her family’s schedule.
“When we heard the news (about the fee-reduction program), we were relieved to think that we would save $350 a month — you know, that’s around $4,000 a year — but now we will have to pay more,” she said.
In the letter, Bluebird owner Puran Bagheri said the rate change
is a scheduled annual increase, and that they make every effort to keep increases to a minimum.
Gregson said there are three areas of child care that need simultaneous investment: affordability for families, a substantial increase in the number of licensed spaces and investment in the early childhood education workforce, including wage enhancements.
Gregson said all three were in the 2018 budget, including wage increases for educators, which she said need to be implemented soon.
She said if the government had provided money for staff wage increases at the same time as offering parents the fee-reduction plan, daycares might not have hiked fees so significantly.