Mother's Helpers
The Tyee
May 12 2006
By: Marcie Good
EXCERPT

... I work at home, and these days I'm getting less done. That's how I find myself in this rather dark basement, guardian-in-proxy of, a quick head count tells me, four children. I'm checking out home-based daycares in my area… So here we all sit, and I'm wondering whether it's a place I want to leave my son.

I had half-listened to Stephen Harper's campaign promise last fall about providing $1,200 to families with pre-school-aged kids, and it sounded great. Such a nice round number, and mine to spend. My needs are flexible, I figured, and probably not best served by a government-mandated, funded and regulated facility.

The Conservatives are scrapping the deals the Liberals made with the provinces, which would have expanded childcare with a definite priority on centres. Under Harper, the feds will give most (80 percent) of the money directly to parents, and the rest to as-yet-undefined means of creating daycare spaces. "This government understands that no two Canadian families are exactly alike," the Prime Minister assured us in his Throne Speech. "Parents must be able to choose the childcare that is best for them." Which also sounds great. The problem, as I'm soon to find out, is that there is so little to choose from.

Funding centres, the line goes, isn't fair to parents who don't use them. This is where the debate quickly gets ugly, pitting the stay-at-homes against the leave-for-offices. As a country, we take responsibility for children attending universities and kindergartens. But our attitude towards the ones who drool is a bit more ambivalent....

'You shouldn't have to feel lucky'

Here's how my hunt went. The first thing I did was phone the Westcoast Family Information and Referral, which sent me lists of centres and licensed and unlicensed caregivers. There are exactly two daycare centres that take year-olds within 20 minutes of my southeast Vancouver home. One gives priority to Collingwood neighbourhood residents, of which I am not. The other has a waiting list of 26 pages, 20 names per page. Six children of lucky parents get in.

I stop by the Collingwood Neighbourhood House, just to admire the unattainable....

Lynell Anderson, a board member of the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC, had a similar experience when she looked for childcare 20 years ago. She's been working on the issue ever since. "You shouldn't have to feel lucky to get your child into a daycare program!" she says.

As it stands, childcare in Canada is a "patchwork," with various levels of government and community organizations contributing pieces. As most parents find out, there are holes. What we need, she says, is local planning that looks at the entire complex picture: building daycare centres, supporting home-based care, helping low-income families, boosting training and pay for staff. After our conversation, I see where Harper's hands-off policy comes from. A hundred bucks a month is such a nice uncomplicated number.

Scraps

Next in my search is the home-based listings. I call 17 homes within a reasonable commute. Of those who take one-year-olds …, two will entertain the possibility that they may have spaces in the fall....

I resolve to find a place for my son out of something better than desperation.

Panic and preparation

I'm realizing why this childcare debate stirs up such emotion, and it's about more than the anxiety of finding a space and being able to pay for it. Daycare means putting your kid into Somebody Else's hands, and it's a panic far worse than the first stuffed-up nose or the first launch off the couch. My office, with no one pulling on the lamp cord or threatening to wail as I talk on the phone, seems suddenly empty.

As I get ready to leave Melissa's, she says we can come back to visit a couple times over the summer to make his transition easier. The boy is a bit miffed that I've put him back in his car seat, as he'd rather work on those beads. It's not his transition I'm worried about. It's mine.