Staffing issues force daycare closure
Peace River Block Daily News
24 Jan 2007
By: Ken Gousseau
EXCERPT

The Berry Patch Child Care facility in Dawson Creek recently announced it will be shutting down its operations in about two weeks - a revelation that has left many parents reeling.

Forty-two children could be without childcare come Feb. 2, following the "unfortunate" decision that South Peace Community Resources Society (SPCRS) announced it was forced to make last Friday.

Several factors led to the decision, financing one of them, SPCRS indicated in a letter that went out to parents on Jan. 19.

Staffing has always been an issue, SPCRS said, especially when it comes to attracting workers who have completed their provincial Early Childhood Education (ECE) certification. Berry Patch staff are unionized under the B.C. Government and Service Employee's Union (BCGEU).

Provincial licensing regulations require specific staffing ratios, and a minimum number of staff with ECE certification. But despite "exhaustive" efforts to recruit more people, the staffing component remains too short at the Berry Patch.

Many positions at the Berry Patch are only part time, so employees are often left no choice but to seek out full time employment elsewhere, SPCRS said.

The manager of the Berry Patch recently submitted her resignation and moved to another part of the province. Finding a replacement would be "extremely" difficult, SPCRS indicated in the letter, given the recruitment problems the daycare has been having.

To make matters worse, two childcare workers will soon be leaving the Berry Patch. One is pursuing fulltime employment elsewhere, while the other is leaving due to additional work commitments.

According to SPCRS executive director Jane Harper, the loss of those three staffers was "the straw that broke the camel's back."

"We have limped along financially for four years now, and we would continue to limp along because we knew it was a needed service in the community," Harper said in an interview on Monday. "But we can't provide the service if we don't have the staff."

That was one of Harper's key messages to about 30 parents who attended a meeting at the daycare on Monday night that, at times, was rather emotionally charged.

Parents wanted answers. The stakes are quite high for some local residents like Sheila Boudreau, an accounting clerk from Dawson Creek. She and her husband both work full time and have a child that needs out-of-school care from 3-5 p.m. every day.

The couple's other two kindergarten-aged children need fulltime child care twice a week, in addition to care every day after school. Boudreau said she has searched for childcare spaces everywhere in Dawson Creek, only to be put on waiting lists like so many others.

"I'm lucky enough that my husband is home a couple of times a week during any given month - he's on a six-and-two schedule," Boudreau said in an interview following the hour-long meeting. "Other than that, I will have to be taking my holidays until I have run out and am forced to quit my job."

Many parents came to the meeting on Monday with ideas. Some suggested having the corporate community subsidize salaries for childcare workers.

However, Harper emphasized the point that there physically was not enough people in town who would apply for the positions. Some parents suggested that corporations could perhaps provide child care in-house for their employees, though they also acknowledged that such an arrangement would likely only help a few families.

Parents were also firing pointed questions in rapid succession, though, and a central theme to those queries soon became clear. People wanted to know why, if the daycare's difficulties were so longstanding, that parents were afforded only two weeks notice in advance of the announced cessation of operations.

"I think a lot of parents had a lot of good ideas and (SPCRS) weren't willing to accept them with open arms," Boudreau said. "My biggest disappointment, as a parent, is if I had pulled my child out of here, I would need to give them a minimum of a month's notice, and I'd have to pay for that month."

SPCRS told parents that if the daycare were to stay open any longer than two more weeks under the current staffing conditions, day-to-day service could not be guaranteed.

"Parents are reacting emotionally, and no wonder they are. They don't know where their children are going to go at the beginning of February," Harper said after the meeting.

"But I don't think it would have mattered even if we'd hung on and sort of limped along, hoping that we'd have the staff every day to cover the children and then have to tell parents, take your child home, we don't have the staff today, I think that would have been even more difficult for parents to deal with."

Harper said the federal Conservatives need to come up with a comprehensive childcare plan for the nation, as had been promised by previous governing parties, but never delivered on....

"My understanding with that particular daycare is that the problem has been that they have been unable to attract the necessary staff," Prince George-Peace River Conservative MP Jay Hill said in a phone interview on Tuesday. "I don't know all the reasons for that, but I strongly suspect it has absolutely nothing to do with either the provincial or federal government. It probably has to do with the way they're managing their operation there."

Hill said he is always open to receiving suggestions on solutions to the Berry Patch daycare dilemma. He said he has not had any discussion with SPCRS as of yet, though he added that something may have been sent to his office regarding the matter while he was recently away on government business. ...

The B.C. government had to make some changes to its child care programs whereby service providers or parents would see a shortfall of about $40 per enrolled child per month, said Peace River South MLA Blair Lekstrom. But that still leaves $60 a month from the Conservatives in parent's pockets, so funding from either government is not an issue in B.C., he said.

"The issue is going to be, how do we find spaces and not even spaces, how do we find people to provide the service?" Lekstrom said.

"We'll do whatever we can, or I will, and if it works out that we have to re-evaluate the Early Learning Education portion or try and find extensions for people to take the course, maybe partner with the provider, I think all those are worthy of consideration. But, apparently, it just wasn't going to work for SPCRS."

Lekstrom said he's talked to a few people who are interested in possibly starting a daycare in town, or expanding their existing facility. The province is also looking at streamlining childcare training credentials between B.C. and Alberta, though Lekstrom said Alberta childcare workers haven't exactly been lining up to come work in this province.

Lekstrom said he is prepared to sit down with SPCRS and discuss ideas around recruitment and retention of staff, which he would then pass on to the provincial minister.

He said he had talked to Jane Harper as recently as Monday night. Lekstrom said he hoped SPCRS would bring their ideas to him.

"(SPCRS) are the experts in the provision of this field," Lekstrom said. "But I don't have a feeling right now that they're confident they can do that, to be honest with you."