Committee calls for better funding for after-school programs
School-age spaces receive far less government support than those for children under five
An all-party P.E.I. standing committee is calling on the province to provide more funding for school-aged daycare.
The province provides substantial public funding for daycare centres that provide spaces for children aged five or under. However, afterschool daycare has not been funded to the same level.
A report of P.E.I.’S standing committee on education and economic growth, tabled in the legislature on March 19, is calling on a similar funding model for daycare that caters to school-aged kids.
The committee heard from staff of CHANCES, nonprofit daycare provider, and from the owners of Merry Pop-ins Childcare Centre, both of whom recommended a funding model similar to early years centres for schoolage daycare programs.
“Attracting and retaining staff is difficult due to the sector's unique working hours and low pay, impacting service consistency and quality,” the committee’s report said.
“It was also said that rural programs face additional staffing challenges due to their location and demographics.”
One day after the report was tabled in the legislature, Saltwire asked Education and Early Years Minister Natalie Jameson whether her department plans to implement this recommendation. Jameson said her department has contracted a consultant, a former employee of her department, to review the degree of school-age daycare services offered in the province.
"It's something that we know is important to families, and we're exploring what our next steps are," Jameson said.
The committee’s report also included several recommendations aimed at helping to expand the number of daycare spaces in the province.
Close to 2,000 children are currently on a waitlist for a space.
The committee recommended the province convert provincially-owned buildings to daycares and help centres with the cost of acquiring land for new daycares.
The report also recommended the province provide wage subsidies for staff not currently covered under early years centre funding, such as managers, administrators and nutrition staff. Jameson said her staff has begun looking into the recommendations.
“Most of them are in progress and not complete – the recommendations. So the committee will likely get a response from us relatively quickly in terms of where we're at for some of these items," she said.
On March 28, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the creation of a new $1-billion federal loan program, as well as $60 million in grants, to help child care centres build new spaces. It is unclear how much of this new funding will be allocated to P.E.I.
REGISTRY REVIEW
The committee’s report also called for a comprehensive review of the province’s childcare registry.
The registry, administered by the Early Childhood Development Association, is a digital waitlist for parents seeking a regulated daycare spot. It is also the key tool used by the province to determine childcare needs in the province.
Staff from CHANCES told the committee the registry’s numbers are often inaccurate. The registry allows parents to sign their children up on waitlists for multiple centres, which they say has muddied the accuracy of its data.
The committee recommended the registry be altered to allow parents to identify their specific needs for childcare. This could include identifying the age of their child and whether their child is already placed in a centre but is waiting on a more preferred space.
The report said the province conduct public consultations on the experience of both parents and daycare operators with the registry.
Staff from the department has confirmed to Saltwire the registry was not set up to be a statistical tool.
In a Feb. 8 email to Saltwire, the department said the registry’s numbers contained errors which incorrectly showed the numbers of parents on the registry spiked between January and August 2023, increasing by close to 600 children.
The technical error, which related to an automatic process for deactivating inactive accounts on the registry, was fixed in July 2023. This led to a drop of more than 1,000 children shown on the registry between August and October 2023.
Despite these errors, Jameson did not commit to conducting a review of the childcare registry, as recommended by the all-party standing committee.
“The ECDA manages the registry. They're constantly making updates to the registry and how it's managed. There has been, I know, one little hiccup there not long ago with the data. So, they likely learned from that experience," Jameson told Saltwire.
"I don't think the registry would be better managed by the department. I think it's in the right hands currently with the ECDA."