VANCOUVER — As parents get ready to send their kids back to school, the province is putting the final touches on a pilot program under which three school districts will provide child care by using empty classrooms and other spaces on school property.
While welcomed by parents, many say it is far from enough as they continue to struggle to find affordable child care and the NDP’s signature $10-a-day child care program stalls.
Chilliwack resident Marketa Turnbull has been stuck on a waiting list for three years as she tries to get her son, now 8, into a before- and after-school program.
She said that, like many parents, both she and her husband, Kriston, work full-time jobs with hours that do not line up with the 8 a.m. drop-off time at Unsworth Elementary where their son just finished Grade 3.
For Turnbull, the choice ultimately ended up being between quitting her job or moving closer to Unsworth, which is what the family did about a year ago.
She said she knows many families do not have that option.
“There’s so many moms out there … that cannot work because of this, including some of my friends, and it’s sad to see them in poverty being low-income or on assistance, because they’ll make more off income assistance than getting a job and also paying for child care,” said Turnbull.
“I think that the government needs to find more ways of helping, especially [single] moms … that really rely on the child-care system and are struggling in poverty.”
In an effort to help with these challenges, Premier David Eby announced in May that the province was starting a pilot program to better integrate child care into schools, with Chilliwack, Nechako and Nanaimo-Ladysmith chosen as test districts.
In a statement Thursday, he reiterated the province’s commitment to affordable child care while recognizing the challenges many families are facing.
“On average, we’ve reduced costs for families per child from $53 a day, to $18 a day,” he said. “There’s more to do, but we won’t stop driving down costs for parents.”
Many B.C. schools offer before- and after-school care, but most are operated by third parties who pay the school district to use its space.
Under the pilot program, school districts will operate the programs. Starting in September, 180 spaces will open at six schools across the three districts with the province providing $2 million in funding.
Mitzi Dean, the minister of state for child care, was not available for an interview, but a statement from the Ministry of Education and Child Care said the government will take some time to assess the program before deciding whether it will be expanded.
“These programs will mean fewer transitions for children, are more convenient for busy families, and may mean part-time district staff can earn full-time hours,” said the ministry.
Child care advocate Sharon Gregson said the pilot is a step in the right direction but needs to be sped up if it is going to make a real difference for families.
“It isn’t sufficient to have an elementary school, with 400 children, have one program with 30 spaces, for example,” Gregson said.
She said legislative changes are needed to make sure school districts have the mandate to fully operate child care, not just rent out space to third parties.
As for the $10-a-day program, the province has not announced any new spaces since March. There are currently 15,300 spaces, short of the 22,000 that were promised by 2023.
The ministry says another intake will start soon, but opposition critics say that seven years into the NDP’s 10-year plan for affordable child care, only about 10 per cent of families are benefiting and hundreds of millions of dollars of federal support have gone unspent.
Earlier this year, it was revealed the province had asked Ottawa for permission to leave unspent $639 million of the over $1 billion the federal government allocated last year for $10-a-day child care in B.C. The money was rolled over to this year’s budget.
“They have funding and the inability to follow through and actually fund those spaces and to administrate the program is a huge problem,” said Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko. “If you’re going to take a program, negotiate with the federal government for funding, and then do so poorly at actually implementing it, it speaks to absolute incompetence.”
Karin Kirkpatrick, B.C. United’s child care critic, said she is disappointed to see that the NDP’s response to difficulties with the $10-a-day program is to launch another pilot program.
She said she would much rather see the government work with existing providers to expand before and after school care instead of placing the burden on school districts.
“It would be a lot easier if government would just support the non-profits that are already providing these services, and they’d be able to roll it out more quickly, and government doesn’t have to be the provider,” Kirkpatrick said.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau said that as long as the government is thinking of child care in terms of individual spaces, as opposed to a cohesive provincewide system, the challenges of availability and affordability will remain unresolved.
She also said the province is not investing anywhere near enough to make the $10-a-day program universal.
“I think this is a matter of misallocation of spending by government, and a failure to focus on the public services that would have a huge positive impact on people’s lives, child care, public transit, a truly thriving public primary-care system in the form of community health centres, public education, post-secondary education,” she said.
“This is the job of government, and this government is spending a whole lot of money and not achieving the results that we should expect from them.”
