Majority of daycares have applied for fee reduction, province says
About 60 per cent of eligible daycare providers in B.C. have now applied for a program aimed at reducing fees for parents, according to new figures from the provincial government.
But the plan continues to be plagued by delays and concerns from child-care providers, and parents who are frustrated they are not seeing the savings they had anticipated.
The Child Care Fee Reduction Initiative is part of the province’s three-year, billion-dollar childcare plan, and is meant to cut daycare costs by up to $350 per month per space, depending on the age of the child and whether they are in licensed family or group daycare.
According to the Ministry of Children and Family Development, as of May 1, 1,766 of 2,850 eligible providers have applied to opt into the program (62 per cent), representing 39,384 spaces out of 49,136. That is up from the April 20 application deadline, when 54 per cent of eligible operators had applied.
Of those who have applied, 1,262 have been approved — that’s 44 per cent of all eligible operators, representing 25,309 spaces. As of last Monday, 1,109, or 39 per cent of eligible operators, had been approved, representing 22,072 spaces.
“This means parents have already begun benefiting from lower child care fees, with even more families expected to benefit as April applications continue to be processed and approved,” said Minister of Children and Family Development Katrine Conroy, in a statement on May being Child Care Month.
Yet while the minister touts the program’s success, some providers don’t understand why they are being denied access, while others remain leery about applying. Some parents are frustrated they are not saving any money while others see relief.
After the government announced the program in the 2018 budget, many families struggling with the high cost of daycare were eager to save hundreds of dollars per month.
But parents complained when their daycares then raised fees, some between five and 15 per cent, right before the program rolled out.
The government said it would investigate those fee hikes, and as such has now denied 56 providers.
Marianne Whitaker, owner of the Victoria-area Alphabet Zoo Learning Centre, is one of those providers. She said she was “in complete shock and horror” when her application was denied because of her moderate fee increase of 2.2 per cent (to $895 per month from $875) and four per cent increase for infant care.
Whitaker said at no point did the government inform her that her application could be rejected. She had already given her clients the discount in April and has since had to ask for the money back to cover expenses. It left her feeling devastated and embarrassed.
She said the reason for rejection was that her fee increase wasn’t in line with the daycare’s annual hikes. But she argues she has been open for only two years, and has never raised fees. This year’s increase, she said, had to do with ECE training, which cost $7,000 for each of her six employees, and muchneeded upgrades to the facility.
She is confused because many other providers accepted into the program had higher fee increases, like Kids and Company, which raised its fees five per cent. That company sent a letter to parents on Friday to say that because of a backlog in the government-approval process, it would not receive funding in time to give parents the savings in May.
The government would not comment on a specific case, but ministry spokesman Brendan Wright said the assessment process is “designed to be fair to all providers who apply to opt in, while also ensuring that savings to parents are not unreasonably diluted by fee increases.”
If a provider increased its fees in the seven months before enrolment in the child-care fee reduction initiative by higher-thanexpected norms — based on each provider’s fee history — he said it will compare the provider’s fees with the median range of fees charged by other similar providers in their area. If the rate is above, and not a bona fide expense that is unplanned or beyond the provider’s control, he said the provider may be ineligible to participate.
Wright said providers who were not approved have the option of applying again through a reconsideration process. Whitaker has applied for that reconsideration, but says she was supposed to hear back from the government by last Friday and has yet to receive a decision.
“We don’t want to fight with the government. We just want everything to go smoothly,” she said.