Here & there: When it comes to top-quality, affordable day care in this region, the Ottawa River is the great divide
Maria Kubacki, The Ottawa Citizen,
28 Nov 04

EXCERPT

Jean Kerwin and her husband, Craig Davis, experience the divide between Quebec and the rest of Canada on a daily basis, up close and personal. Although they work in Ottawa, they live in Gatineau -- and Kerwin wouldn't have it any other way. When Davis wanted the family to move to Ontario, Kerwin refused. The reason? Day care.

"My priority is my kids," says the 35-year-old service co-ordinator for ADT Security Services.

The couple's children, two-year-old Maddison and four-year-old Bradley, attend La Garderie Les Feux Follets in Gatineau, the biggest of the Outaouais region's 59 Centres de la Petite Enfance (CPE). The regulated, non-profit day cares cost $7 a day under Quebec's $1.3-billion subsidized system, which is often cited by child-care advocates as a model for the federal government when it establishes its own national child-care program.

It's not just the low cost Kerwin likes. She raves about the quality of care, from the building -- which may only be entered using a security code -- to the caring, helpful staff and play-based educational programming. Her children have so much fun they don't realize they're learning. They especially love Brin D'Ami, a mouse puppet that teaches them life skills such as patience and waiting their turn.

"It's perfect," she says.

The Quebec system though, is not perfect. There are still not enough spaces, and the government's own studies show that even the non-profit centres need to improve. But in theory it is a universally accessible service that strives to provide high-quality, educational programming delivered by qualified staff.

Across the river in Ottawa, there is no such bliss for most working parents. Waiting lists for quality day cares are long, and the costs are out of reach for many middle-class parents.

Top quality day-care spots go to the relatively wealthy or to the poor, who qualify for subsidies.

When it comes to good, affordable child care, the Ottawa River is the great divide.

Unlike care in a Centre de la Petite Enfance, private day care or home in Gatineau, which at $7 a day costs just $140 a month, an infant or toddler space at most licensed day cares in Ottawa can, at the high end, cost nearly $80 a day or $1,600 a month. Ottawa has just over 12,000 licensed spaces, about 6,400 of them subsidized.

Census data for 2001 indicates that even then, there were 67,320 children aged up to six in Ottawa. Seventy per cent of Canadian mothers work but high fees and scarcity of licensed spaces means a lot of parents can't access regulated care.

Teresa Scrivens, a 24-year-old single mother, was able to get a subsidy to help her cover costs, at The Children's Place on Carling Avenue, where her four-year-old son, Jadon, spends a lot of time. Scrivens works odd hours, and sometimes picks him up after work between 9:30 p.m and 1 a.m. He sleeps there every Friday when her job in marketing takes her out of town.

With no family to help her, Scrivens credits the flexible, 24-hour care available at The Children's Place with allowing her to take a promotion with better pay, but non-traditional hours and extensive travel. She feels comfortable leaving her son in what she describes as a family-like atmosphere. "I'm just really glad Jadon is where he is," she says.

But unlike in Quebec, where everyone who can secure a space in a regulated child-care service is entitled to a subsidy, parents in Ottawa must prove their need by undergoing a process so involved and frustrating that Glebe Parents' Day Care program co-ordinator Leah Fournier says she's had some simply give up.

Jane Joy, the City of Ottawa's manager of children's services, believes the present subsidy system should be thrown out and replaced with universality. She says some of the rules of the subsidy system "defy logic" and the criteria for determining need are set too high. The process involves assessing a family's income vs. expenditures, so there is no set dollar amount for qualifying, but generally families with a net income of about $25,000 make the cut.

"There are many more parents that are middle income who need help to pay," says Joy. Many of those families turn to informal, unregulated care, which may be great or not so good depending on the provider, but is not subject to government monitoring.

Some families choose to hire a nanny with early childhood education (ECE) qualifications...But that still means spending as much as $2,400 a month, or nearly $30,000 a year. Others decide that one parent stays home….

There is also licensed home child care, favoured by parents who prefer a more intimate, family setting, especially when their children are young, or who need a more flexible arrangement than most day cares offer.

But cost is not the only barrier to this almost dizzying array of choices. Even for parents who can afford it, there simply aren't enough spaces in regulated services…

Still, if you want your child to start day care when she or he is a year old, the child should be signed up long before they are born. Centres considered to be highly desirable report women calling when they are just thinking of getting pregnant.

Access can be especially difficult for parents who need flexible, extended hours. …Sometimes parents are forced to supplement their regular child care with support from extended family.

And finding care for children with special needs is all but impossible, says 37-year-old engineer Sharon Liff, whose three-year-old son Adam has Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease and cannot walk, talk or sit unassisted. She was fortunate to find a home day care to take him, where Adam benefits from being with other children.

"She should be commended," she says of her sitter, Sharn Naidoo. "Most caregivers won't take special-needs kids."