Parents battle over child care; Worsening shortage of daycare spaces leads families to desperate measures
Times Colonist (Victoria)
May 14, 2008
By: Shannon Proudfoot

When word got out that five daycare spots were opening up at a local community centre, parents in Richmond camped on sidewalks for days. In Winnipeg, a childcare centre had to issue a memo warning parents to stop pestering and bribing staff.

Elsewhere across the country, a worsening shortage of daycare spots is pushing parents to make obsessive phone calls, and even going as far, according to one daycare professional, as to bring relatives from their home countries on temporary visas to care for children or time second pregnancies to take advantage of sibling wait-list policies.

"When we see parents reacting really strongly, we know it's from a place of great anxiety, and that desperation is pushing them to extremes," says Bev Christian, assistant director of the University of B.C. Child Care Services.

She fields at least 15 tearful phone calls a day pleading for one of the organization's 350 spots, but with 1,400 people on the waiting list, there's little Christian can do except listen sympathetically. Some parents have to give up on a degree halfway through or forego their return to work because they can't find childcare, she says.

In Winnipeg, K.I.D.S. Inc. executive director Karen Ohlson was being accosted in the grocery store by desperate parents and her staff members were followed from room to room or berated in front of the children. The facility has 86 licensed spaces -- just six of which opened up this year -- and almost 470 children on the waiting list.

"It really got to the point where we were feeling bullied," Ohlson says.

…. Vancouver resident Camilla Lade says the situation is "getting worse and worse."

"It's almost impossible in some ways unless you get lucky."

The 32-year-old Vancouver resident has found only one daycare out of two dozen she called that's accepting new names for its waiting list, and that facility hasn't even been built yet.

Still, she's been warned her son might not get a spot there before he reaches school age -- remarkable, considering that he isn't due to be born until July.

She has taken an activist turn and started drafting letters to politicians about the shortage of childcare spots….

As a parent and board member of the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C., Crystal Janes sees both sides of the daycare desperation. A lot of "badgering" phone calls went into safeguarding her daughter's spot on waiting lists, she says, but now she encourages parents to turn their energies to the politicians who can improve the system.

"Advocates and people working within the field, we don't get heard, we're a special interest," she says. "But it's the parents' voice that makes a difference."