More early learning spaces available in Swift Current

It will still be some time before the 30 new child care centre spaces in Swift Current are ready, but there has already been significant interest from families in those pre-school spaces. The federal and provincial governments announced in early December that an additional 149 licensed child care centre spaces have been allocated in Regina, Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Swift Current. The funding for these spaces is provided through the Canada-Saskatchewan Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Agreement. Thirty of those spaces have been allocated to Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre Inc. in Swift Current.

According to Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre Executive Director Sheila Paradis about half of those spaces have already been filled since the official announcement.

“So that in itself tells you what the need is in the community, because they're all pre-school spaces,” she said.“We can't fill them with infants and toddlers, and we can't fill them with school age. They're all just pre-school spaces. We know the need is there and we're going to try very hard to get them open.”

There will be a lot of planning and preparation before the 30 spaces are ready and at the moment there is no firm date for opening day. “When we say Rome wasn't built in a day, neither are early learning centres,” she noted. “It takes a long time for us to tick off all those boxes and make sure that we have everything accurate before we even start.”

The announcement that 30 of the 149 additional child care spaces have been allocated to Swift Current was excellent news for Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre.

“We certainly didn't expect to get them, certainly not right off,” she said.“We knew that there weren't a lot of spaces available in the province and we know that all corners of the province are very short of early learning spaces. So we were very pleasantly surprised and it's good for the community obviously. That's why we do it, it is community based, and it means that more people can go to work and not be on wait lists for early learning and care in the city.”

Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre had to complete a community needs assessment as part of the application process for the new spaces to indicate their existing partnerships with other organizations in the community and details were required about other available programs in the community.

“These kinds of questions are to avoid double dipping in the early years plot,” she explained. “They want to be sure that services aren't being double dipped in any community and just fully so. We all know that those dollars are pretty thin these days. So double dipping is not something that any of us see favourable for budgets.”

Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre submitted the application for additional child care centre spaces based on their assessment of the need in the community.

“When we start to see a waitlist develop within our spaces, then we start to contemplate whether opening new spaces is affordable for us,” she said. “There's never a guarantee that those spaces are going to be funded.”

They have previously opened unfunded spaces, and all the dollars for those spaces are coming out of the Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre budget. “It's very difficult, and that's why these licensed and funded spaces are very, very welcome to us, because it does mean that we don't have to do that again to open those spaces,” she said.

Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre is currently providing 185 licensed spaces in Swift Current, of which 45 are unfunded spaces. These spaces are at three different locations in the city. The oldest location on Winnie Street opened around 2004 in a former church building, where there are 89 spaces from infant to kindergarten age. The second location in the Saskatchewan Valley subdivision opened in 2014 in the new joint-use school facility. It provides 51 spaces from infant to kindergarten age.

The most recent location opened in the fall of 2017 in the City of Swift Current’s Dickson Community Centre. There are 45 spaces for kindergarten and school age children.

One of the important decisions that must be taken with regard to the 30 new funded spaces is where they will be located. Classroom space is available in the older part of the Dickson Community Centre that can be converted for their needs, but the location of the new child care spaces is still under consideration.

“We want to be sure wherever we put that money, we're going to stay there,” she said.“We want it to be a quality environment and we want to be able to say in 20 years this money was well spend, because nobody has extra money laying around. So we're very thankful for receiving those funds and we want to show due diligence by spending them appropriately. ”

The bulk of the government funding for the 30 child care centre spaces will be used for capital costs associated with opening these spaces. Natural Wonders Early Learning Centre currently has about 50 staff and the new child care spaces will require an additional 4-4.5 FTE positions. This expense must be funded from their own budget. There are many challenges for a non-profit organization that provides early learning child care spaces in a community. Funding and ensuring that those spaces remain affordable for families are key issues. Another issue is the remuneration for early childhood educators, which is lagging behind those of other educators.

Paradis is a passionate advocate for early learning, which she believes is still an undervalued part of the education sector.

“Children learn more from birth, in the first 2,000 days of their life is what the statistics say, than they ever do the rest of their entire life,” she said. “The early years are obviously the most important years. So having high quality programs for the future of our children is probably one of the most important things we can do for our children.”

She referred to the results of an international early learning and child well-being study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which indicated that Canada can do more to provide early learning opportunities.

“Out of the 23 countries that they studied in the report, Canada has been and continues to be a laggard when it comes to those funding dollars put into their youngest populations,” she said. “The benchmark in the world is one per cent of the GDP to be invested. Nordic countries, which do the best in the world, contribute about three per cent into their early years program. Canada puts in 0.25 per cent to their early years.”

She added that investment into early learning have longterm benefits for a society, and those dollars will have a very good return value for countries.

“The statistics right now are for every dollar that they put in, they get $7 dollars back over the life of the child,” she said. “Those important pieces of lifelong successes for children are very obvious, that if they attend two years in early learning programs, those $7 pay off.”