Your Views - Daycare dilemma
Vancouver Island News Group / Saanich News
Letters -- Enid Elliot, Chair, Regional Child Care Council and Heather Kay, Coordinator, Options Daycare
June 14, 2006

Our thanks to Brennan Clarke for his attention to the issues surrounding child care (Saanich News, June 2,7).

He highlights what child-careworkers have been saying for years: that their work is underpaid and undervalued.

Few professions requiring post-secondary education receive less compensationthan early childhood educators,despite theenormous difference good child-care can make to a family.

On average, child care providers in Greater Victoria only make between $12 and $15 an hour. Without appropriate compensation, new child care providers will not want to enter or stay in the field, making it even more difficult to staff spaces that are already in shortage.

We are pleased that Camosun College has reinstated the second year of it's early childhood education program but that is only the beginning.

A quality system of child care also hinges on worthy wages and affordable and accessible child care spaces.

If the provincial government is seriously committed to better care for BC's children, they need to provide stable, secure funding to child care programs as well as lobby Ottawa for more money and a comprehensive plan for child care.