Daycare welcomes twins with open arms
Nurturing staff, accessible playground helped girls with cerebral palsy feel at home
“Nope. Can’t do it.”
That was the response Amanda Gallant, of Oshawa, received two years ago when she began seeking child care for her twins, Faith and Joy, then 21⁄ years old.
2 “I probably called six to 10 daycares,” says Gallant. “I’d ask them, ‘Are you accessible?’ and they’d say, ‘no’ and hang up.”
The problem: both girls had cerebral palsy. They were non-verbal, required wheelchairs to move around and Joy had a feeding tube. Gallant was returning to school and needed a place where the girls would be safe, well cared for and happy.
But, she says, “although schools have to be accessible, daycares don’t have to meet those requirements.”
Fortunately, Gallant had noticed wheelchairs going in and out of the Oshawa Mary St. YMCA Centre, just a five-minute drive from her home.
“I figured if they could get into the centre, maybe the daycare was accessible, as well,” she says. “So I gave it a shot and called.”
As she found out, the YMCA — which is Canada’s largest licensed provider of non-profit child care — has a commitment to accessibility that is written right into its policy statement.
And it offers a variety of child-care programs to suit the needs of all manner of parents, offering extended hours (for those whose work lives don’t fit into a 9-to-5 window), as well as before- and afterschool programs and a range of family-support programs.
Gallant got a tour of the daycare and was impressed by what she saw.
“It was 100-per-cent accessible,” she says. “The building was all on one floor and anywhere there were stairs, they had ramps.”
What’s more, she got a sense the staff had been trained to deal with people with disabilities.
“My one daughter is severely disabled, so she looks a little different,” Gallant explains. “But the staff members were so friendly.
“There were no weird looks and the way they talked, I could tell they would have no issues with learning how to help my daughters.”
Those first few days of daycare were harder on Gallant than they were on the girls, she admits.
“I worried a little about them being exposed to sickness and germs at daycare.” But Gallant reasoned, despite their disabilities, Faith and Joy were entitled to have as normal a life as possible. “They needed that social aspect,” she says.
Faith and Joy could now participate in a way they’d never before been able to do. Until then, Gallant admits, she had had few opportunities to get them out to local parks to play.
“It’s hard to get there by myself with two wheelchairs,” she says. “And really, there’s not a whole lot the girls can do.” But the daycare’s playground was accessible. What’s more, the other kids were accepting, and even protective of the girls.
Gallant said, in addition to a feeding tube, there were periods of time when Joy required oxygen.
The staff would teach the other kids when to try to include Faith and Joy and when to give them space. When new kids came into the centre, the other kids would, in turn, instruct them. “If they saw that Joy was using her feeding tube, they’d tell the new kids, ‘You have to leave Joy alone now, because if you don’t she might puke on you,’ ” says Gallant. As for the staff members, they included the twins in every activity, from swimming in the pool (which they “absolutely love”) to making crafts. Gallant still has the cards Faith and Joy made for Mother’s Day 2013 up on her fridge, complete with tiny handprints and poems. “Right from the beginning they had fun,” says Gallant. “The staff always made sure the girls’ days were pretty jam-packed so they didn’t have a chance to notice that Mommy wasn’t there.” The daycare came through at a darker time too. Joy died in February of complications from pneumonia. The entire time Joy was ill and hospitalized, Faith continued to go to daycare, giving her a sense of normalcy and consistency and allowing her mom to focus on her sister.
As at all YMCA daycares, the centre’s hours run from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. in order to meet the needs of working parents.
That meant Gallant was able to spend long days at the hospital knowing Faith was well cared for.
When Joy finally gave up her battle, Gallant was touched by the outpouring of sympathy and comfort from the staff, kids and other parents at the daycare. At the “graduation ceremony” that marks the beginning of summer, “they put together a slide show with pictures of Joy and they made a photo album for me,” recalls Gallant. “Just about everyone in the room was crying.”
In the end, she says, it is comforting to know that Joy touched so many lives in her short time on earth.
“I don’t know how many people have told me that knowing the girls, and seeing their determination, has given them a different perspective on life,” says Gallant.