Welcome changes for child care
If you want to drive a motor vehicle in Ontario, you must have a licence. Sell food and/or drinks to the public? Licence. Adopt a dog? Licence. Catch fish? Licence.
But what if you need to put your child in care? You might find a space or get on a waiting list for a licensed daycare centre, or in a private home under the umbrella of a licensed agency. But for reasons of cost and/or availability, it’s equally likely you will end up with an unregulated daycare operator.
How does it make sense to require a licence to catch trout but not to charge money to care for children? The answer is it doesn’t, which is why the Wynne government’s plan to make it easier and more affordable for home daycares to join Ontario’s licensed system is noteworthy and welcome. The changes mean home daycare providers will no longer have to pay a percentage of the daily fees they receive from parents to join a licensed home child-care agency. And this also means parents already using licensed home daycare should see a fee cut. Operating funding for home child-care agencies will begin in 2018 as part of the previously announced plan to create 100,000 new licensed child-care spots for children under age 4. Spaces will also be added in schools and community-based settings.
To be clear, unregulated doesn’t equal bad or inferior. Many of us have had excellent experience with unlicensed caregivers. But there have been some exceptions, including a handful of deaths in unlicensed settings, and a lack of transparency in some others where caregivers were being investigated, including in one case for abuse.
Bottom line: In unregulated settings there isn’t much the government can do to proactively ensure quality and safety. If something goes wrong, there are mechanisms to intervene, but where there have not been issues there is minimal oversight. No one checks for safety. Caregivers don’t have to have a vulnerable sector check. They aren’t required to have CPR training or even first aid.
There is no doubt that equitable access to safe and affordable child care helps everyone. When Quebec made changes some years back, one of the results was a notable increase in the number of women choosing to return to the workforce. Ontario’s unemployment rate sits at 5.8 per cent, the lowest rate in 16 years. Export and advanced manufacturing are thriving. There are jobs available, and reasonable measures to bolster workforce growth must be welcome.
More importantly, these changes get at the central logic disparity noted earlier. Children are our most precious asset. Ensuring optimum safety and accountability in child care is not only good for working parents and families, it is a collective responsibility we haven’t lived up to before now.
It’s time to address that.