Energeticcity.ca
Minister of Children and Family Development Mary McNeil was in Fort St. John yesterday, to see what’s going on. …
She, along with the new Executive Director of Service Northeast for the MCFD Ed Berry, Friendship Centre Executive Director Anita Lee and MLA Pat Pimm, discussed how childcare and family services have survived since the economic downfall in 2008/2009. …
Despite the Centre’s ability to stay afloat, there still remains a shortage of childcare in Fort St. John, which McNeil says is a province-wide problem. Part of the problem is recruitment and retention of Early Childhood Educators….
“How can we train folks in their own community so they’ll want to stay, because training them somewhere and bringing them in… the synergy isn’t there sometimes, so how can we do a better job?, she asks, as it’s something the ministry is looking into…
A report came out last year by the Coalition of Childcare Advocates, that identified areas where the Ministry could improve, but McNeil says while it has some suggestions worth looking into, but it comes with a hefty price tag.
“My annual budget for MCFD is $1.331 billion,” she says. “That one document is almost $2 billion in itself. That’s over and above child protection, adoption, foster care, all the other things that we do in the Ministry.”
Instead of talking numbers, she’d prefer to talk ideas, and see what can be done with a smaller budget. She says the challenge is to find ways to give families lots of options, which could include tax savings.