Funding cuts cripple inner city daycare: Centre caters to special needs kids
Cheryl Rossi, Vancouver Courier
August 21, 2009

A daycare in the Downtown Eastside that looks after 49 children, 34 of whom have special needs, has lost the money it needs to adequately staff the centre.

Stacey Bonenfant, whose sons, aged 4 and 5, attend the Phil Bouvier Family Centre's daycare ..., says the Ministry of Children and Family Development should continue to provide the daycare with money for three additional workers.

"People need to see this as creating a safe and healthy atmosphere for inner-city kids," she said. "Some of these kids' 15-year-old, 17-year-old brothers and sisters are on the street right now. They're using drugs, they're involved in gangs, they're involved in the sex trade. And these are the kids that are going to be in that place in 10, 15 years, and it's going to cost us a heck of a lot more in criminal trials and jails if we don't support these kids now and just give them an equal chance."

Ray-Cam Cooperative Community Centre runs daycare for infants, toddlers and three- to five-year-olds at the Phil Bouvier Family Centre. Even though the waiting list for all of Ray-Cam's daycares sits at 300, said Fern Jeffries, who helped make the centre a reality, it doesn't turn away children with special needs. But she said it needs money to retain extra daycare staff to assist the boy who's unable to feed himself, the little girl who has problems with balance and other children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, behavioural disorders and language and speech delays.

Bonenfant, who said she stopped using drugs five-and-a-half years ago, said if there hadn't been a daycare close to her home that accepted her older son Dragon, who she describes as having an anxiety disorder, she wouldn't be working full-time.

But the Ministry of Children and Family Development stopped funding for the three extra staff in June. Jeffries said the ministry, which helped the centre open, always knew the daycare would need extra funding. But the ministry says the daycare was over budget and provided short-term bridge funding of $60,000.

…. Jeffries says the money the daycare receives from parents and their daycare subsidies merely covers the cost of basic staffing, equipment, food and diapers.