Still not enough licensed child care spaces in region

The move toward $10 per day daycare is a ‘transformational, once-in-a-lifetime’ change and an incredible improvement in accessibility, but concern continues surrounding an expected explosion in demand.

Last March, the provincial and federal governments announced a joint commitment to help fund the creation of 86,000 new licensed child-care spaces across Ontario.

The Region of Waterloo expects to add 1,871 of those by 2026 and, in fact, has already added nearly a third of that total over the last year.

“So that’s good news, there’s 581 new spaces that did not exist a year ago,” said Barbara Cardow, director of children’s services with the Region of Waterloo. “I will say, that still will not be enough though.”

Cardow said the commitment to reduce daily daycare rates to an average of $10 will ‘finally’ make child care affordable to ‘every’ family, especially given low-income families will remain eligible for a subsidy. However, with that, she said the region also expects to see demand explode.

“Because it’s now feasible, or accessible, financially for families, I believe the demand will exceed even the 1,871 new spaces,” she said.

As is, Cardow said only about a quarter of local kids aged four-and-under have access to licensed child care. The province, however, has set a target of 37 per cent.

“So how do we deal with that,” asked Cardow. “Well, we need to grow and, in order to grow, more funding is needed and a plan is needed to make sure we grow well.”

She said the region is working to identify places and spaces where growth is needed to address what it sees as an accessibility imbalance. She said those include areas where there are currently fewer physical spaces, as well as areas with more low-income families.

Cardow, meantime, said the region is also looking to put a focus on ‘quality growth’, saying it can’t simply be adding spaces for the sake of adding spaces.

“We know that high-quality child care is important to supporting children to reach their developmental milestones and get on positive developmental trajectories,” she said. “But we also know low-quality or marginal child care has a negative impact on children.”

“So this is another area where we’re preparing,” she added. “We want the growth to only happen in programs that are positioned well and are willing to attend to the pieces that lead to high-quality child care.”

She said this includes ensuring staff are paid appropriately, that centres are set-up for optimal child development, and that structures are in place to make sure profits are re-invested into maintaining high-quality care.

“We are [also] setting up a process whereby any new programs that come into our community in the future, or that grow, will meet that criteria of being ‘high-quality’.”