Families ‘desperate’ in hunt for daycare
3,600 children are on the city’s wait-list for licensed child care
If you’re looking for licensed child care in Peterborough, there’s good news and bad news.
The good news is that the fees have been reduced by 52 per cent, compared to a couple of years ago, translating into a savings of $30 per day, per child.
But the bad news is that spots are hard to come by locally. The city maintains a centralized wait-list for licensed child care in Peterborough, and there are 3,600 children on that list.
Parents can thank the federal government for reduced child-care fees — a relatively new funding program aimed to reduce costs until they reach $10 daily — across Canada by 2026.
That rate of $10 daily — already in effect in eight territories and provinces, including Quebec, for example — is still the goal for Ontario, where rates are still undergoing reduction.
Meanwhile, the 52 per cent cost reduction so far has made some families “very happy,” said Sheila Olan-MacLean, CEO of Compass Early Learning Centre, which operates 42 child-care programs in Peterborough city and county, City of Kawartha Lakes, Durham and Northumberland.
But with more affordable fees has come a surge in demand, Olan-MacLean said. Now she has anywhere from 500 to 900 children on the wait list for each of the 42 Compass programs.
“We have families every day, like, just desperate on the phones, asking us if there’s any way that we think we can care for their children,” Olan-MacLean said. “And we would love to. But we need support
With more affordable fees has come a surge in demand for daycare spaces
to do that.”
Peterborough-Kawartha MP Michelle Ferreri, who is the critic for issues related to families and children for the opposition Conservatives, said in an email that the federal government is to blame.
“The Liberals promised affordable child care, but they have instead delivered chaos,” Ferreri wrote, adding that the Conservative government would “remove the Liberal ideological shackles” and allow more “flexibility” for licensed child-care operators and parents alike.
But Ferreri is painting the more-affordable child-care program “with a tainted brush,” said Minister for Families, Children and Social Development Jenna Sudds.
“It is really unfortunate that she (Ferreri) chooses to do so,” Sudds said in an interview in Peterborough earlier this month.
“I mean, you only need to talk to parents here in Peterborough to understand the impact of this program,” Sudds said.
Ferreri said it’s too bad Min. Sudds didn’t seek feedback from any of the thousands of Peterborough parents who are still desperately seeking child care.
Sudds said the local wait-list of 3,600 children is indeed “substantial,” but it’s because parents can now afford child care.
“As the price goes down, demand goes up,” she said. “So the solution to that, obviously, is more (child-care) spaces, but it’s also more early childhood educators. They have to go hand in hand.”
Sudds said there’s progress being made on both fronts, locally. She said the Ontario government has allocated funding to add 485 more child-care spaces in Peterborough by 2026, for example. She further said that post-secondary students in Peterborough who are training to become early childhood educators are doing placements at local child-care centres, with the hope they might get hired and stay.