Child-care options cut: LAYOFFS/Child care resource and referral program to lose 17 employees
Surrey Now
January 27, 2007
By Janis Foster

Karen Norman's eyes begin to water as she walks through the soon-to-be-deserted child centre at OPTIONS: Services to Communities Society in Newton.

Seventeen employees at Child Care Options will be laid off as of March 14. The wonderful collection of toys, education kits, CDs and books in the Early Childhood Resource Library will have to go -- where, no one knows. All of the educational toys, arts and crafts supplies in the Early Years Learning Store will have to be sold off. There will no longer be a teacher store in Surrey.

The Newton Family Resource Program, the Parent Child Mother Goose Program and community kitchen programs will no longer have a site. Child Care Options Resource and Referral Program, Mobile Child Care Services and Mobile Child Services Conference Care are cancelled until further notice. The future of 20 different parent support programs is uncertain.

"It's heartbreaking," said Norman, deputy director of women's programs, day care, Family Place and child care at OPTIONS, looking sadly at the shelves of educational toys. "This has been developed over the last 18 years. And we have brand new resources that were just purchased. We had an increase of funding to enhance resources in the past year and now we're told it's redundant and it just has to disappear."

Maggie Blondeau, assistant librarian, said the equipment has been lovingly assembled and created by child educators and has been catalogued online so it is accessible to anyone for a small annual fee of $20, not just child-care providers.

"It's much more than toys. It's not what you get at Toys R Us. It's more specialized and task specific," she said.

The cuts mean much more than losses to child's play. In the last year, the Child Care Options Resource and Reference Program assisted 4,758 parents with referrals, provided services to 450 CCRR members, delivered 53 workshops/classes to 1,043 participants, provided 115 parent/child drop-in programs, made 19,124 equipment loans and handled 27,258 consultations. It has taken OPTIONS 18 years to build up these services and resources for families in Surrey, Delta and White Rock and just a stroke of a pen to make them disappear.

On Jan. 7, Linda Reid, B.C.'s Minister of State for Child Care since 2001, announced child-care program funding cuts of almost 15 per cent -- back to 2005 levels -- to child care resource and referral programs. According to the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C., (CCABC) the estimated total value of the cuts is $35 million to $40 million. On Jan. 16, the coalition issued a press release calling on Reid to resign from cabinet.

The province's cuts include a 27-per-cent reduction as of July 1 in child-care operating funding for children up to six years old in a licensed group and family child-care services. By Oct. 1, funding will be reduced 77 per cent for child care resource and referral programs that provide parents with information about child-care options, assist parents in applying for child-care subsidies, recruit family child-care providers and support quality in child-care services. The austerity measures further include a freeze on major child-care capital funding and a cap on access to child-care operating funds for most new child-care spaces.

Reid blames the cuts on the federal government's decision to cancel its agreement on early learning and child care with B.C., effective March 31, but the CCCABC claims that B.C. cut more than $40 million from its own spending on child care, which was never replaced. Last year the Conservative federal government replaced the former Liberal government's 2005 subsidy program with the universal child care benefit of $100 per month for children under six.

The province's cuts will inevitably increase child-care fees. Reid has said with full-time day care of 20 days per month, the increase will be about $40 per month. That means the $80 (after tax) subsidy now received will be cut in half.

The cuts to child care resource and referral programs will mean families will no longer have readily accessible information about child care in their community or assistance in applying for child-care subsidies.

"That will be lost," Norman said. "It's particularly important for those families that have English as a second language or low literacy skills."

The CCCABC predicts the cuts will result in more severe shortages of licensed child-care spaces in B.C. and a decline in the quality of child-care programs. Emma Dyck, owner of Small Wonders Preschool, was shocked to learn of the funding cuts when she dropped into OPTIONS this week.

"I've been coming here since 1991. I just found out," said Dyck. "I'm emotional. I'm angry. I would not have a job in day care if licensing was not 100 per cent behind me and OPTIONS and all they offer here. I don't know how I'm going to tell my preschool teacher. This is really going to hurt the quality of child care."

The funding cuts will also impact the Growing Together Daycare program that provides teen mothers with on-site day care so they achieve high school graduation at Guildford Park secondary.

"What kind of government takes away funding from 14-year-old mothers who are trying to finish their schooling? That one really floors me," said Blondeau. "How can you do that? It's very short-sighted. These teen moms can't come up with the money.

"B.C. has a $2.2 billion surplus. It's not about money."

The teen mom program saved the life of Tanya Simsonsen, a special needs preschool teacher and married mother of three.

"I was a teen mom," said Simsonsen. "There was no one to look after my son. If I didn't have that program I wouldn't have been able to go to school. It not being there is the worst thing they could do."

The provincial budget for CCRR will go from $14 million to $3 million by September. All CCRR programs in B.C. will shut down Sept. 30. "We have no idea what resources, if any, will be available after September," Norman said. Ironically, Minister Reid has visited OPTIONS CCRR several times, citing it as a model for child development in the province, said Norman. "I really don't think she realizes."