Axe falls on child resource centre: Providers 'devastated' as province chops funds that were actually boosted a year ago.
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Times
January 19, 2007
By: Danna Johnson
EXCERPT

A year ago they were celebrating.

Now the smiles on the faces of staff at the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Child Care Resource and Referral Program have disappeared.

A year ago, the province boosted funds to resource and referral programs, allowing the centre to open up a large facility on Lougheed Highway. Along with the new facility, they were able to expand their mandate, hire staff and boost the lending library.

Now, all of the staff has been put on notice and the nice big building will soon be forced to close its doors.

"What are we going to do?" Kathy Mang, who operates Nana's Angels Daycare in east Maple Ridge asked The TIMES.

When she heard that the centre would be forced to close she said she was "devastated.

"We get so much support from them. They really uplift us. There is no one if there isn't the child-care referral society. It's just so essential."

Mang was just one of dozens of local licenced child-care providers reeling from this week's news.

The Minister of State for Child Care, Linda Reid, announced child-care funding cuts on Jan. 5 but it wasn't until earlier this week that the extent of those cuts became clear to childcare providers....

Currently, the local resource and referral program uses about $275,000 annually, said the program's supervisor Jo-Anne MacKenzie.

With that cash the four full-time and one part-time staff member conduct monthly workshops and courses for child-care providers as well as business start-up programs for those looking to open their own licenced daycare.

The program puts out a bi-monthly newsletter, provides networking opportunities for care providers and boasts an extensive toy-lending library. For parents, the program keeps track of all registered child-care facilities in the area, what they do and where they are in relation to schools. MacKenzie said staff have also taken over from the Ministry of Children and Families and now assist parents sort through the reams of forms required for child-care subsidies.

The province has funded the program since 1991, but before the Early Learning and Child Care Agreement was inked, its budget ran at about $170,000 annually.

"There are 130 child-care providers in our community," MacKenzie said, explaining that her program is tasked with screening all of them. More than 600 parents access the program annually, she added.

"It's such devastating news," said Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Community Services Executive Director Vicki Kipps.

"We've gone from one extreme to the other."

"If we'd have been having a conversation a year ago it would have been celebratory," she said. As it is, "we're devastated. We're shocked. We didn't anticipate this."

And neither did the care providers who say that without the services provided by the resource and referral program, the community and its children will suffer.

"What would I have done if it wasn't for them," Marie Karwath of Mee-Wee's Corner Family Daycare wonders.

She's been licenced to operate in the community since 1991 and can't remember a time she didn't use the program.

This isn't an optional service, she said, but necessary for a growing community.

"It's going to be a real shame. I know we need a lot of new childcare providers in this community," but shutting the doors on their only resource won't help bring those providers to town, she added.

"Right now there's such a demand for child care and the good ones that were there are quitting. They don't want to do it because the government is cutting back so much.

"Nobody seems to care about the children," Karwath said....

"If you're a parent looking for childcare how are you going to find it? Things are going to revert to a more underground business, where Suzie down the street takes 10 kids after school.

"I could not be doing the level of childcare I'm doing if they did not push me in the right direction," Morrison said.

But that level of childcare, according to Mission-Maple Ridge Liberal MLA Randy Hawes, might be too much to expect the ordinary parent to have to pay for.

Taking time out from his holiday in Maui to speak with the TIMES, Hawes said this level of childcare is the "Cadillac model," and "sometimes you can't afford the Cadillac."

Right now, the province can't afford the same level of services specifically because the federal Conservatives refused to renew childcare funding, he said.

Hawes said that when his children were growing up, there was never any assistance for daycare, he's never been "a user of the system," and there are plenty of options for parents. Those options, however, don't all involve licences.

"There are a number of daycares that are not licenced and they provide good services," he said.

This attitude doesn't sit well with Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows NDP MLA Michael Sather, who alleged the provincial Liberals knew the federal government had no plans to renew childcare funding, and did little to change its mind.

"I talked about this issue and about the need for the Premier, in no uncertain terms, to call on the Prime Minister to maintain the funding. The Premier had no response.

"Now we're seeing the results," he said.

The Liberals, he added, seem to view child care as a luxury.

"It's not a luxury," he said, adding Hawes comparing licenced facilities with Cadillac's "is really irresponsible.

"It's not a luxury it's a significant, essential part of maintaining society... I think it's really shortsighted."

Local Conservative MP Randy Kamp could not be reached for comment.