First phase of regional Children’s Access and Inclusion Plan underway

Region of Waterloo Children’s Services is looking for feedback from the community about their newly launched Children’s Access and Inclusion Plan.

It’s still in it’s first phase of development – but the plan aims to build a more accessible and inclusive child care system. 

“We wanted to take a really proactive and intentional stance around including, ensuring that children from a wide range of families are included in early learning and licensed childcare,” said Kristen Bustamante, manager of special projects in children’s services.

“Were really trying to communicate that this is the beginning, and we want to work with the community to identify other priorities for phase two.”

Bustamante said they wanted to give the community knowledge that changes were coming.

The Access and Inclusion Plan was created under the 2022-2026 Early Years and Child Care Service System Plan. There were 16 action steps outlined in the new plan that are either already underway or planned for 2024.

Some of those steps include creating a growth strategy to target growth in priority neighbourhoods, continuing to review child care subsidy policies for more equity of access and collection of race-based data for Children’s Services programs.

It was also made using Ontario’s Access and Inclusion Framework for the early years sector.

“There are barriers to accessing child care, so for certain groups they may have certain barriers when trying to access child care subsidy. The process may be complicated or difficult to understand,” said Bustamante.

Bustamante added that they received a lot of feedback during the development of the Early Years System Plan that they put into the Access and Inclusion Plan.

They heard feedback from families in the community that didn’t feel well represented or included.

Bustamante said one of the main concerns from families was that there just isn’t enough spaces.

“Between 2022 and 2023, 921 new childcare spaces were added to our community and an additional 1400 spaces have been allocated and are expected to open before the end of 2026,” added Bustamante.

Children’s Services is looking for community feedback about child care and the new Access and Inclusion Plan.

More information on the Children’s Access and Inclusion Plan can be found on the Region of Waterloo website.