Providers face staffing crisis
Local daycare workers struggling with low wages
By Megan Grittani-Livingston
Whistler Question/Squamish Chief
May 2008

Child-care providers are fighting a crisis situation, fuelled by declining wages for early childhood educators that barely allow them to make a living, according to child-care advocates and many of the people who care for the corridor’s children.

Suzie Soman, director of early childhood development services for the non-profit Sea to Sky Community Services Society (SSCS), said the SSCS child-care workers have been forced to take wage cuts of $3 to $5 per hour between 2002 and now to keep the SSCS services running, because the society could no longer afford to pay them what it once did.

SSCS runs multiple daycare programs for children of different ages in Squamish and Pemberton. The SSCS used to pay child-care workers $16.32 per hour and now can only give them $12.24, Soman said, because it’s reluctant to increase parent fees and will not alter the quality of service despite governmental funding cuts.

“We would like to see all our staff across the board making $20 an hour,” Soman said, but the question now is how to make that happen….

Squamish child-care providers from the SSCS and other local facilities took about 20 of the kids under their care for an advocacy walk through downtown Squamish last Thursday (May 22), seeking to inform the community about the difficulties early childhood educators face.

Joined by representatives from the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union (BCGEU), participants distributed information about the crisis they see in child-care staffing, hoping to alert local parents and families to the issues.

Soman said it’s tough for child-care providers to make their case to governments faced with electorates where many people don’t have children or daycare to worry about, and thus have other priorities….

But the need is still there for many. Local parents struggle to find and pay for spaces in daycare, and the SSCS has had to resort to fundraisers such as a June 21 beer-and-burger silent auction to supplement its child-care programs. The money raised goes providing the service and frees up some cash to top up staff wages, albeit at a trickling pace of two per cent per year.

In the meantime, parent fees bear a disproportionate burden, SSCS staff say.

Lisa McIntosh, program consultant for the SSCS Child Care Resource and Referral Program, said increased fees are what parents feel as a result of the funding and staffing crises. Eighteen months ago, the average cost of a day in child care would be $40, but today the average cost is about $45 or $50, she said.

Meanwhile, Soman said, the SSCS child-care programs go into deficits trying to provide the best possible care. “There’s so much put on us to make sure these children have the best care… and we go into deficit to provide it,” she said.