A new report makes recommendations on how services here can catch up to Canada’s leading communities.

After compiling a report that assesses the state of child care on the North Shore, Denise Buote has concluded that services here lag far behind other Canadian communities, but she’s optimistic the committed districts and city can change that.

“If you step back the two key issues are there aren’t enough spaces and there aren’t enough people wanting to go into (the child- care field),” said Buote, director of Arbor Educational and Clinical Consulting Inc. “I feel a lot of hope because working with the three municipalities, there’s a strong will to see this move forward and keep working on it. If you have committed individuals, they will push it forward.”

Buote made two key recommendations in the report. The first encourages residents and community leaders to continue to lobby the provincial government for better funding. While the government touts B.C. as one of the best places to live, another recent report said the province has the highest child poverty rate in Canada, she said.

“It would be great, given how rich B.C. is, that we kind of follow in Quebec’s lead and use some of those dollars for child care. They’re saying B.C. is the greatest place to live, but we need to put that into practice ... We have the Olympics coming up and all these initiatives, but when it comes down to it, we need to take care of people in the province. There is money the government could be putting into child care,” she said.

The second major recommendation is a move towards a hub model that integrates child care and family and children services. Within that model municipalities should work with other key organizations, such as the school districts to incorporate child care into schools, and Capilano College to increase the number of graduates coming out of their child- care program. The hub should also have community advisory committees for different child care regions and look for opportunities for research at the community level.

Quality child care benefits everyone, Buote says, not just families with children. It’s important to engage the community and change that archaic perception.

Buote collected data from surveys, research and interviews with parents and child-care providers.

“You get different information in different ways,” she said. “You need the surveys to get those statistics down. I find talking to parents is very interesting. Hearing parents’ thoughts and hearing the consistent frustrations, but also their ideas. They had wonderful ideas about bringing communities together.”

Parents, she learned, are concerned mainly about a lack of child-care spaces, the high cost of available spaces and the struggle of balancing work and child-care schedules. But not one of them suggested cutting child care workers’ wages. “(That) was really interesting to hear,” Buote said.

Child-care providers told her it’s difficult to retain workers. The report indicates that staff who look after school-age children make an average of $14.43 an hour while infant and toddler staff make $17.62. Providers also said government funding and resources like the North Shore Community Resources are critical.

“The surprising thing for me, I suppose, is we have so much evidence-based research of the benefits of quality child care. In spite of all this research that’s been done – and not just in Canada, we actually have international examples – it’s just so surprising that Canada lags so far behind,” Buote said.

The report will be presented to the Districts of North and West Vancouver councils. North Vancouver city council heard the results at their July 30th meeting.

“Staff and council felt the report was an excellent piece of research that provides us with a foundation to (look at) our child care policies,” said Paul Penner, chair of the North Shore Child Care Planning Committee and Community Planner of the City of North Vancouver. “I think there’s a good deal of new information there. Some of it strengthens what we already suspected. I think a lot of the value is in the recommendations as well as the review of best practices from other jurisdictions.”

Council has directed its staff to look at the recommendations so they can decide in the fall whether they will revise their policies.