Williams Lake CCRR will lose $115K: Wyse
Williams Lake Tribune
By Sage Birchwater
Apr 24 2007

Cariboo South MLA Charlie Wyse says the Williams Lake Child Care Referral and Resource Centre will lose $115,000 a year from its budget thanks to cuts to the program announced by the provincial government earlier this year.

Executive director of the Women's Contact Society Irene Willsie says the cuts amount to 55 per cent of the program's previous budget, and will result in a reduction in staff from three full time employees and two part time staff, to three part time employees.

Willsie says the Interior region is so large that it took a bigger funding hit than some of the more densely populated smaller regions.

"We cover an area that extends from Likely and Horsefly all the way to the Central Coast to Bella Bella and Klemtu," Willsie says. "The distances we have to cover means it's more costly to provide services."

Minister of State for Child Care Linda Reid says rural regions like Williams Lake get more money per child than more urban areas to compensate for the extra travel required to run the program.

She says there are 5,500 children registered in the Williams Lake region and the child care referral and resource program here will receive $173,000.

"That's more funding per child than is received in the Lower Mainland," Reid says.

Willsie says none of the deliverables in the program's contract have changed despite there being less than half the original funds left to provide them. So she says the group is being forced to reprioritize the services it offers.

The child care resource and referral centre will continue to assist with child care subsidy applications; it will continue registering and monitoring license-not-required child care facilities; and it will continue parent toddler activities, Willsie says.

Reductions in service will occur for training child care providers; the resource and lending library; the child care referrals data base; outreach to outlying communities; and liaisons with other child care service providers.

"We'll be visiting outlying communities less often," Willsie says. "And we'll have less time to promote the lending library books, special toys and materials. The monthly newsletter will also have to be downsized."

Before the cuts Willsie says the child care resource staff made two visits a year to Bella Bella and Klemtu. Now she says they will be forced to provide service as best they can over the phone and through the internet.

"We did training seminars for child care providers in Bella Bella and Klemtu. Now training will be less accessible for people wanting to open a child care facility in these communities."

Reid says the provincial budget for the child care resource and referral program is $9 million, which is the same as it was last year. The difference is the $5 million federal government contribution that was withdrawn.

"That's basically $400,000 a month we're short to operate child care resource and referral," Reid says. "So we had to find the $5 million. We put dollars in place based on the percentage of children that reside in each area."

She says 39 per cent of the kids live in the Fraser Region but they are only getting 30 per cent of the dollars.

Wyse says other provinces managed to maintain the level of child care resource and referral services despite the federal cuts.

"Ontario and Manitoba actually increased funding for child care," Wyse says.

Reid says Ontario intends to carry over the allocation that was remaining in their child care federal agreement, but British Columbia can't do that because it proscribes to a different accounting practice.

"We operate under generally accepted accounting principles where dollars must be spent in the year they are received."

She says B.C. would have loved nothing better than to do what some of the other provinces did.

"But our auditor general said that was not permissible."

Reid says the type of work by child care resource and referral is changing.

"We created a provincial line that now receives about 44,000 calls per month, that is answered in 140 different languages. That's an enormous issue where there are multiple dialects and multiple languages."

She says a lot of work that was previously done by direct referral in the Lower Mainland is now done on the provincial line or online.

"So the landscape is changing."

As far as cuts to programs go, Reid says a year ago agencies around the province met their responsibilities with $9 million. She says the federal infusion of cash for the early learning and childcare agreement was only in place for one year.

"We have had great success delivering that program for $9 million, and I believe we will again because we have new services in the basket we never had before."