Canada now has its second national daycare program, officially termed the Canada-wide Early Learning and Childcare (ELCC) system. Announced in the April 2021 budget, the federal government’s plan far exceeds what even the most hopeful advocates had been promoting as recently as 2020: it promises $30-billion in new federal investments between 2021 and 2026 and thereafter over $8-billion yearly in new federal support.

The objectives are affordability, universality, availability, quality and inclusivity.

It is little wonder, therefore, that seven provinces plus the Yukon signed on to the new ELCC system in the summer of 2021, as bilateral agreement after bilateral agreement was announced in rapid succession. Coming to a quick agreement was incentivized by the federal government’s commitment to start the flow of funds within 60 days of getting a signature. With the exception of Quebec (more on this later), the agreements consistently specified the pan-Canadian objectives behind federal investments in ELCC: affordability, universality, availability (i.e., enough spaces), high quality and inclusivity/equity. The agreements allow a provincial or territorial government to elaborate its own plan for addressing these objectives, taking into account local conditions and needs.

Make no mistake, however: This has been a top-down approach to program development. Justin Trudeau’s government holds the purse strings and simultaneously is the final arbiter of whether an action plan aligns with its ELCC objectives. The birth of $10-a-day childcare, therefore, is being directed in much the same way as Liberal federal governments in the 1950s and 1960s took the lead in establishing universal access to healthcare.

During the federal election campaign in the late summer of 2021, the Conservative Party promised to tear up the newly signed agreements and kibosh the nascent ELCC system. But on September 20, 2021, the Conservatives lost the election, thereby giving universal, $10-a-day childcare a window of opportunity to grow and become part of the fabric of Canadian society.

At the heart of the new national program are five principles. The first is affordability—the goal is to cut in half the average fee for regulated, full-time care of young children by the end of 2022 and further lower it to $10 a day by 2026. Second is universality—the plan envisions “that all families in Canada have access to high-quality, affordable, flexible and inclusive early learning and childcare no matter where they live.” This means that although enrollment of a young child in an ELCC space will be optional, the federal government’s ambitious plan is to grow the supply of $10-a-day spaces to meet the demand from sea to sea to sea. Third is availability (really, an antecedent principle to universality): each bilateral agreement specifies a provincial or territorial government’s targets for increasing the number of ELCC spaces. The fourth principle is high-quality ELCC rather than custodial (just-keeping-the-kids-safe) daycare. To support this principle the federal government is insisting that new spaces in daycare centres be operated by public bodies or not-for-profits, and that various steps to improve quality be taken such as increasing training requirements for workers and establishing wage grids “to support the attraction and retention of early childhood educators.” Fifth is inclusivity/equity. The new ELCC system is to be constructed so that vulnerable children, children with disabilities and those from diverse communities such as new immigrants will have spaces equal to or greater than their share of the eligible population of children. Furthermore, the federal government intends to work with “Indigenous partners,” with $2.5-billion of the $30-billion total investment directed to developing “high-quality, culturally appropriate childcare for Indigenous children guided by Indigenous priorities.”

Alberta was one of the three Conservative provincial governments that declined to sign bilateral agreements prior to the 2021 election campaign. This might have been a partisan move to bolster the electoral fortunes of the federal Conservative Party. Yet at least in the case of Premier Jason Kenney’s government, four more-fundamental factors were behind its initial lukewarm-to-hostile response to the Trudeau government’s plan: first, rejection of the universality principle for social welfare programs; second, resistance to government provision of daycare and so-called lack of choice; third, the United Conservative Party’s own rushed and misguided policies on childcare; and finally, Kenney’s long-standing Western Canadian grievances with Canadian federalism.

These were flimsy grounds for opposing $10-a-day childcare, considering that the federal government was promising to transfer to Alberta a staggering $3.8-billion between 2021 and 2026 if the province came on board (an average investment of over $2-million per day). After the conclusion of the federal election, the Kenney government soon decided that continuing opposition to such a beneficial national program was untenable. Yet the same factors that made the Kenney government hesitate to sign up for the national program caused it to come up with a “made-in-Alberta” approach that falls short in its commitments to high-quality ELCC. Alberta’s plan under ELCC will stream working- and middle-class children into basic-quality facilities, while only well-off families will be able to afford the higher parental fees at centres that require staff to hold a two-year diploma in early childhood education.

This is far from the first time Alberta has opposed universality for social welfare programs. Before universal hospital coverage became a central component of Canada’s social safety net in 1957, the provincial governments of Saskatchewan and Alberta pioneered two competing approaches to government support for hospital services. In Saskatchewan in 1947, Premier Tommy Douglas’s Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government introduced a universal program that treated hospital services as a human right available to anyone on the basis of need rather than ability to pay. “For Douglas,” notes University of Toronto health policy specialist Gregory Marchildon, “universality offered greater equality and therefore hope for those who would otherwise be treated or stigmatized as second-class citizens.” Universality meant a “levelling up” of services, in principle guaranteeing a common high standard of hospital care to everyone.

The Social Credit government in Alberta, headed by Premier Ernest Manning, likewise believed that governments had a role to play in ensuring hospital coverage. Its program, however, in effect between 1950 and 1958, was minimalist; it subsidized “the purchase of health insurance for those who could not afford to pay” but left most of the population to make individual decisions on hospital insurance from among available market options. Manning’s underlying values were individual responsibility, consumer choice through markets and government subsidization of social services only as a last resort. His government never abandoned these values. However, after Saskatchewan’s program was adopted as the template for Canada-wide universal hospital coverage, Alberta made significant modifications to its program to qualify for federal financial assistance. Then at the end of the 1960s, the promise of federal money likewise motivated Alberta to abandon its “Manningcare” program of subsidizing existing private insurance policies for doctors’ bills and join the Medicare system.

Although Manning’s values lost out in the Canadian healthcare debates of the 1950s and 1960s, they nevertheless have had an enduring influence on how successive conservative Alberta governments have approached funding daycare. Individual responsibility has been stressed, with parents forced to figure out their best childcare arrangement from an array of regulated and unregulated options that differ widely in price and quality. The rapid expansion of commercial daycare was financed by huge publicly funded operating allowances in the 1980s, leading to the present-day predominance in Alberta of for-profit over not-for-profit daycare (65 per cent to 35 per cent of licensed spaces in daycare centres, 2019). The UCP’s rejection of the universality principle echoes Manning’s reasoning for opposing universal healthcare.

Between the end of the 1970s and 2022, subsidization of the childcare costs of low- and modest-income families was the go-to government policy, with most families receiving small partial subsidies or none at all. The problem with building a childcare system around income-tested subsidies is that it relegates subsidized children to inferior, low-cost options. This is because the maximum subsidy levels must be kept below what unsubsidized parents can reasonably be expected to pay in the market—otherwise those parents will feel hard done by and vociferously complain. Drawing upon Tommy Douglas’s critique of Manning’s health insurance subsidization system as “tin-pot medicare,” a childcare system where government financial aid mainly consists of income-tested subsidies can be called “tin-pot childcare.”

Children from lower-income families who should be receiving the very best ELCC for a “head start” are streamed into cost-cutting services. Meanwhile, middle-income parents who don’t qualify for a substantial subsidy are pushed toward relying on relatives or unlicensed childcare because the market rates at licensed daycares and regulated day homes are too expensive. And parents with ample income simply purchase high-quality licensed care (or go with the high-cost option of hiring a nanny). “Tin-pot childcare” is thus stratified by quality related to the income of users. Unfortunately, the Kenney government is attached to the anachronistic values that justify such a flawed system.

Harper-era attack language doesn’t resonate today; affordability is a bigger concern.

In the 2005–2006 federal election campaign, the Harper Conservatives promised to cancel Liberal plans for a national childcare system and instead provide parents with a $100 a month taxable allowance for each child under the age of 6. As Martha Friendly and Susan Prentice recall in About Canada: Childcare (2009), the Conservatives argued “the embryonic national childcare program would not provide choice for parents and would be an ‘institutional’ and ‘one-size-fits-all’ program with a massive bureaucracy.” Shortly after being elected, the new PM pointed to the “armies of academics, researchers and special interest groups” that had benefited from the developmental work on the Liberal program. In turn, Harper lauded his own $100 a month allowance, since “it cuts out the political and bureaucratic middlemen. It provides real support.”

Premier Kenney used some of the same arguments when commenting on the Trudeau government’s plan for Canada-wide ELCC in April 2021. He called it a “cookie-cutter approach,” echoing the Harper government’s “one-size-fits-all” portrayal. He described it as “government-run” and “union operated,” thereby suggesting that the program would serve the interests of “political and bureaucratic middlemen” and a “special interest group” (labour unions) rather than Canadian families. Both Harper in 2006 and Kenney in 2021 claimed that the respective national childcare plans ignored parents’ choices on childcare.

Times have changed. Attack language that worked for Harper in 2005–2006 doesn’t resonate with as many Albertans today. Affordability is a bigger concern for many families with young children. In recent years the federal Liberal government has implemented the generous Canada Child Benefit to help all but high-income families with the costs of raising children. Unlike in 2005, therefore, a plausible alternative to the Canada-wide ELCC system is not a cash benefit for families with young children, since such a cash benefit is already in place—and daycare remains unaffordable.

Greater public understanding that crucial brain development occurs during the early years makes high-quality ELCC (rather than bargain-basement custodial care) an imperative. Indeed, research suggests that government investments in ELCC create long-term financial benefits to society, such as more-productive citizens with higher lifetime earnings.

Universal childcare will boost women’s labour force participation rate and reduce inequality.

Universal $10-a-day childcare “will increase women’s labour market participation and shrink the gender participation gap as more mothers enter the workforce.” Childcare programs have long been recognized as way to reduce gender inequalities. “COVID has shown us all,” Budget 2021 states, “that [childcare] is an urgent economic issue too.” Specifically, the pandemic created a “she-cession” as women were forced out of employment to care for children. In fact, an economic analysis conducted in 2020 by Jim Stanford concluded, “ELCC services are an economic and social program that literally ‘pays for itself,’ thanks to the government revenues generated automatically through this enhanced economic activity.”

In its early years (2019–2021) the UCP government made decisions on childcare here that are at odds with the direction of the Canada-wide ELCC system. After disbanding the previous NDP government’s $25-a-day pilot programs at 122 not-for-profit centres, it ended the Alberta Childcare Accreditation Program, which had been implemented in 2005 near the end of Ralph Klein’s tenure as premier. The program had been designed to continually improve the quality of care in facilities without having to raise licensing standards; it was ended without so much as token consultation with the 1,000-member-strong Association of Early Childhood Educators of Alberta. Two smaller subsidy programs, also cut by Kenney without consultation, had helped pay for licensed preschool and had subsidized the care of children by relatives.

This run of cuts, rooted in opposition to universality, and a zealousness to reduce government’s regulatory and financial role in childcare, made it hard for Kenney’s government to embrace the Canada-wide ELCC program.

Kenney reacted strongly to news that Quebec had signed on to the ELCC program without the conditions required of other provinces. It boiled down to “it’s just not fair” that Quebec can do what it wants with the money and Ottawa won’t offer us the same deal. When the $10-a-day childcare plan was announced in the federal budget, Alberta finance minister Travis Toews said Alberta wanted its share of the promised funding with no strings attached. Kenney built on this theme the day after Quebec’s agreement was announced: “We very specifically said we wanted the same kind of flexibility that Quebec traditionally gets. Ottawa told us no. Then yesterday they signed exactly that kind of deal with Quebec. This is part of a pattern. Why are Western provinces being treated as second class by Justin Trudeau?”

For the last quarter century, Quebec has been the only province with widely available, affordable childcare. Initiated in 1997 as a $5/day program ($8.50/day in 2021), it has contributed to an increase in the employment rate of mothers with young children that has outpaced increases in other large provinces. Quebec’s strong commitment to affordable childcare is demonstrated by its high spending. For instance, its per capita spending on regulated childcare programs (age 0–12), 2018–2019, was $2,296, more than four times what Alberta spent ($503).

Quebec’s role in pioneering affordable childcare was recognized when the province reached its “asymmetric agreement” with Ottawa in summer 2021. The agreement promised to transfer almost $6-billion to Quebec over five years. In recognition of the fact that Quebec had already largely achieved the objectives of the Canada-wide universal ELCC system and had already invested billions of dollars in ELCC over and above other provinces, the money is to be transferred with none of the terms, conditions and monitoring required of other provinces.

Kenney’s comments may well have been intended to rile up anti-Trudeau sentiment in Alberta just prior to the 2021 federal election. Factually, however, they were misleading. The differential treatment of Quebec and Alberta is justified because Quebec has already realized the objectives of the ELCC program, while Alberta has a long way to go. If any other province or territory had invested as heavily in affordable childcare as Quebec over the last quarter century, it too would have qualified for money with no strings attached. Indeed, in response to Kenney’s complaint about Canada’s “two-tier federation,” Trudeau said, “If Alberta had childcare at $8-a-day across the province, we would have had an approach similar to Quebec. So let’s not create constitutional conventions out of this.”

After the Liberals won the federal election and just days after the swearing in of Karina Gould, the new federal minister of families, children and social development, the Alberta and federal governments began intense negotiations on the specifics of an action plan for $10-a-day childcare in Alberta. The bilateral agreement was signed on November 14, triggering the initial flow of federal funds in early 2022. The big news at the November 15 announcement ceremony was that fees for licensed childcare would be reduced on average by half right across Alberta starting in January 2022. Tens of thousands of Alberta families would soon be saving hundreds of dollars every month on childcare fees. A boom in daycare, family day home and preschool enrolments was sure to follow—a welcome development for a sector which had suffered a financial hit from low enrolments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this agreement with Alberta, the federal government did not give any ground on the key elements that had defined its agreements with other jurisdictions: universal, $10/day childcare by 2026 is a requirement; unlicensed/unregulated childcare is excluded; and, while all existing for-profit spaces are eligible to receive federal funding, a planned expansion of licensed capacity by 42,500 spaces will be limited to the not-for-profit sector (although growth of home-based childcare under a licensed agency is a secondary priority).

In the November 15 press conference, Kenney suggested that the province had bargained hard to get “all types of licensed childcare for kids aged up to kindergarten included in the deal,” including part-day preschool programs. Yet the Canada–Yukon bilateral agreement, signed in the summer of 2021, specified that “preschools and nursery schools” qualified for participation in the ELCC system. How hard was it for Alberta to secure what Yukon had already achieved Later the premier was asked what in the bilateral deal justified the delay Alberta parents had endured. He replied, “A heck of a lot more flexibility to respond to the needs of Alberta parents. This province is different. One of the ways it’s different is we have by far the largest percentage of childcare spaces offered by private operators, and they initially did not qualify in the initial deal that was offered. We didn’t want to exclude all of those parents. We got what we believe is a much better arrangement that reflects the diversity of choices of Alberta parents.”

This statement is false. Alberta is not all that unique when it comes to the role of commercial childcare—it is just one of the seven provinces/territories where for-profit centre spaces were more prevalent in 2019, with Newfoundland and Labrador leading the way in this regard. Hence, other jurisdictions had to negotiate the role of their commercial operators long before Alberta got around to it.

Both Kenney and Alberta minister of children’s services Rebecca Schulz have portrayed the UCP’s fight for expanding the commercial sector’s role in $10-a-day childcare as support for the many “female entrepreneurs” who operate daycares and family day homes. They’ve failed to mention, however, that the UCP’s action simultaneously supports corporate childcare, namely the BrightPath chain that runs 32 daycares in Alberta (24 in Calgary and surrounding municipalities) and the Kids & Company chain that operates 31 daycares (split between the Calgary and Edmonton regions). BrightPath, which also has 46 centres in Ontario and seven in BC, was purchased in 2017 by Busy Bees Nurseries, the UK’s largest childcare corporation. At the time, BrightPath ran 77 centres in Canada. The sale price of $145-million valued each centre at about $1.9-million.

A crucial question to be addressed in coming months is whether BrightPath, with its primary responsibility to investors’ rate of return, should have a growing role in providing $10-a-day childcare in Alberta. Brooke Richardson’s study of licensing inspection data for 29 of BrightPath’s Alberta centres in 2013–14 compared to 29 geographically matched not-for-profit centres, suggests not: “The quality of care offered by the corporate for-profit model at BrightPath falls short of that supplied by not-for-profits.” Most importantly, BrightPath centres had more than twice as many critical-incident investigations as the not-for profit centres and were the subject of 41 complaint investigations, more than 10 times the frequency at the not-for-profits.

The best feature of the Kenney government’s action plan for $10-a-day childcare is the substantial reduction in fees that started in January 2022. In other ways, however, Alberta’s plan lacks the imagination and commitment to quality ELCC seen in other provincial/territorial plans. Newfoundland will be developing a pre-kindergarten program for 4-year-olds with its ELCC money. It has also committed to increasing the percentage of staff that are “fully certified Early Childhood Educators” to at least 60 per cent by the end of 2025. BC has promised to invest $2.5-billion in childcare over the next three years on top of the funds committed by the federal government. To stabilize its labour force, Yukon has mandated the highest minimum wage in the country for a childcare worker with an ECE diploma (roughly $30 an hour). Along the same line, Manitoba has pledged to bring in “a wage floor for different positions and classifications.”

Alberta’s initial plans for space creation and quality enhancement do not measure up. The $241-million earmarked for creating 42,500 new not-for-profit spaces works out to just $5,670 per space. Will community groups be expected to hold bake sales to raise the money to build or expand an ELCC centre Further, there is no mention of mandatory minimum wages or a commitment to increasing the wage supplements that have been a feature of Alberta’s childcare system since 2002 (but frozen in value since 2008). And there are no specifics on a commitment to “improve certification levels for our early childhood educator workforce,” a crucial issue given that 40 per cent of the childcare workforce in Alberta has no formal education in the field (it can soar as high as 67 per cent in any given daycare under current regulations).

Worst of all, the Kenney government has created a new version of “tin-pot childcare” with its funding formula. Affordability grants for providers are based on “average program fees across the province” rather than on the true cost of a particular program. As a consequence, these grants, in combination with income-tested subsidies, will put a cap on government financial support for any particular child, thus acting to replicate the stratified system in place prior to 2022.

For example, the fee for a toddler at a high-quality childcare centre in Calgary in the fall of 2021 was $1,310 a month. Under the new ELCC, this fee will be reduced by $510 through a grant paid directly to the centre. It could be reduced by an additional $266 using an income-tested subsidy also paid directly to the centre. Thus the fee for a toddler at the centre in question now sits between $800 (for families with yearly gross incomes of $180,000 or more) and $534 (for families under $120,000).

For low- and modest-income families, a $534 monthly childcare bill would still take a big bite out of the household budget. Therefore, they will be incentivized to scour the market for a cheaper option—perhaps a centre that had only charged $900 a month in the fall of 2021 because many of its staff had no formal early childhood education training. In this second example, the same operating grant and subsidy will be applied, meaning that low- and modest-income families will see a monthly fee of only $124.

Under the UCP government’s model, high-quality ELCC will be a prerogative of families who have the money to afford a hefty monthly fee, while families of more limited means will be pushed towards lower-cost options. Albertans would not tolerate a healthcare system that provided multiple tiers of service depending upon one’s ability to pay. Our new ELCC system must be fixed to eliminate this systemic deficiency.

At the ceremony marking the Canada–Alberta agreement on ELCC, two federal ministers—Chrystia Freeland and Karina Gould—made a point of paying tribute to the tireless work of local childcare advocates. Gould said, “Thank you to the women and men who have been fighting for affordable, quality, inclusive childcare in this province for decades.” And deputy prime minister Freeland—who spent her early years in Alberta’s Peace Country—spoke of her late mother, Halyna Chomiak Freeland: “One of the Alberta women who, when the royal commission on the status of women came out just over 50 years ago with its historic report calling for the urgent creation of a national system of early learning and childcare …with her friends worked so hard to build it. They didn’t quite get there,” she noted, “but I was in the kitchen playing on the floor when I heard them working hard, and I knew how important it was. And so I really want to say first of all to Alberta’s grandmothers, to that amazing generation of second-wave feminists, you started this work and I am so pleased to say to you today we are getting the job done.” On a more sobering note, however, Gould advised, “…for all those advocates out there, for all those childcare providers, this ambitious agreement will continue to need your support to meet its objectives.”
 

Tom Langford is a professor emeritus of sociology at U of C and the author of Alberta’s Day Care Controversy: From 1908 to 2009 and Beyond (AUP).

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Fairytales often have historical bases. “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” comes with a date: June 26 is the day the children were led away. Crafty researchers found a rough match in the history of a German town. The history refers to events in the 1200s as having happened “after the children went away.” There are a lot of theories as to what accounted for the children’s disappearance: that they were sent off to fight in the crusades; that someone schemed to coax them to start towns farther east; that there was a sudden dance mania and the children danced away, some of them dancing until they died. Relative to these options, the story of being piped away by a rat-piper is relatively plausible.

A future fairytale could be called “The Wrongly Taught Children of Alberta,” in which the children are unable to leave.

The reason I’m telling you this is because of certain events in Alberta politics during the last year. Some of these boil down to the question “What does Jason Kenney have against children?” I started to wonder if, in the long run of history, some of these current events might not become the stuff of frightening fairytales.

The first fairytale could be called “The Wrongly Taught Children of Alberta.” This story is practically the opposite of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.”

King Kenney and Princess LaGrange are worried that the children of Alberta will grow up, see what’s happening in their province and get the hell out. So the King and the Princess devise a system whereby the children will be unable to leave. They create a new K–12 curriculum that teaches Grade Twos and Grade Threes about the Roman Empire and how Christianity became its official religion in the 300s AD. There’s nothing untrue in this, but the children who are supposed to learn it (ages seven and eight) aren’t able to understand yet what a year might be. In other words, there’s no possible danger of them learning what they’re taught. Likewise, the years of Marco Polo’s trading exploits along the Silk Road to China and Genghis Khan’s consolidation of the Mongolian tribes. History will be a weird, dreamy thing to these Alberta children. There will be a part later on in their education where they are taught that, yes, the Nazis were pretty bad and killed a lot of Jewish people. But let’s not forget what great roadbuilders they were.

With this approach to education, our children will not only want to stay in Alberta, they will develop a hatred and horror of people from elsewhere who, when they meet them, will laugh unkindly at the curious way they speak and the odd things they believe. “Wow, these losers think the other side should have won the Second World War.”

Another fairytale that might emerge from the UCP phase of our province’s history could be called “How Alberta Children Saved the Adults from the Bad Bad Disease.” In this story, a terrible viral disease keeps coming back in different forms. The people of Alberta think it will never end, but King Kenney and his court wizard, Hinshaw, have a brilliant idea. They force the children back into school, knowing they will give each other the illness. The idea is that getting the disease will make them immune and prevent them from getting the disease. This might happen anyway in the long run, but King Kenney is always in a hurry. Of course, like “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” this fairytale has a lot of sad parts where children die of the disease or are never quite as healthy again. This fairytale’s ending is quite different from the ending of “The Wrongly Taught Children,” in that the disease scheme causes thousands of parents to take their children and run like hell away from Alberta.

But that suits King Kenney just fine because he didn’t like those people anyway. Bunch of wimps. To replace them, King Kenney comes up with giveaway schemes and inducements that attract the type of new Albertans he wants: entrepreneurs, especially medical schemers, and the kind who can transform heavy oil and coal into jobs and big bucks. He will also lure in medical workers and labourers from poor and crumbling countries who will take what they’re paid and keep their mouths shut.

And everyone who is the right kind of Albertan will live happily ever after. As for the rest: meh.

Fred Stenson’s novels include Who By Fire, The Trade, Lightning, and The Great Karoo.

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A good centre meets basic needs, providing healthy, nutritious meals and snacks, space for rest and naps, and time outdoors in the fresh air, even in winter when snowsuits are required. It goes without saying that the centre is clean and requires children to pay attention to good hygiene. Crayons, paint and paper, building blocks and other toys are available for the child’s creative imagination. On the walls are displays of what the children are doing and learning: drawings, paintings, other artwork, calendars, maps, number charts and photos of outings. The space has distinct areas for several different activities. It is an orderly environment with some predictability. Children have opportunities for interacting with others and also for pursuing activities alone.

The key is skilled staff and warm, responsive interactions between staff and children. The staff are trained and certified in early childhood education. The adult-to-child ratio is high. The staff plan a variety of activities in a language-rich environment where the children are regularly read to and books are discussed. Children are encouraged to talk with their teachers and each other.

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This is what makes an excellent childcare centre. —AV‎ ‎ ‏‎ ‏

Dana Prediger is a Calgary-based photographer.

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“I don’t know if I could live that long,” she says.

The Kohkom (Cree for “grandmother”), a member of Peace Country’s Lubicon Cree Nation, has already outlived one granddaughter. Dani died four years ago when she was six weeks old, 24 days after having been seized from her mother by provincial officials and placed in a foster home. The foster parents had brought the baby into bed with them in the early morning hours. Shortly thereafter they discovered she was no longer breathing. Alberta’s chief medical examiner ruled the cause of Dani’s death “undetermined.”

Kathy’s account of the day Dani was born in an Edmonton hospital in 2013 is heart-wrenching. The grandmother was drumming in the birthing room with her daughter and son-in-law. Her younger daughter was also there. For 24 hours the family cowered every time the door opened, terrified a child welfare worker would walk in and “kidnap” the baby. Kathy likens the atmosphere in the hospital room to the time when an old boyfriend held her captive, put a gun to her head and played Russian roulette.

At the time of Dani’s birth, her two older sisters had been in government care for two years—apprehended due to a misspoken word on the playground, says Kathy. A child intervention assessor told the family that with Kathy’s support, Dani could stay with her parents, who were in the process of getting their two older girls back (they eventually succeeded). But before any of that could happen, Dani was taken “without explanation,” says Kathy, and placed in a foster home. Kathy’s younger daughter applied for kinship care in a process that was “very invasive and degrading”; the assessor was “surprised when he couldn’t find anything wrong” with the home.

Dani’s aunt received approval—a month after Dani died. Formal child intervention and criminal record checks are a slow process. “We found out later a lot of foster parents get children before they get complete clearance,” says Kathy. “It’s a roll of the dice.”

Kathy doesn’t blame the foster parents for Dani’s death. She holds the system liable.

Kohkom Kathy’s granddaughter is one of 225 children, youth or young adults to have died in the provincial child welfare system since 2008. They died after having been taken away from their parents, ostensibly to protect them from harm. Of these children, youth and young adults, 131 were Indigenous. Only 10 per cent of Alberta children are Indigenous, but they make up 69 per cent of the child welfare system. Indigenous children come into care more often, stay in care longer and are less likely to be returned to their families than their non-Indigenous peers.

Deaths of children in provincial care have been the focus of two Alberta governments, spurred on by separate investigations by local journalists. In late 2013 the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald co-published their “Fatal Care” series, which revealed that the Progressive Conservative government had underreported the number of deaths. The investigation found that 145 foster children had died between 1999 and June 8, 2013, but government reports accounted only for 56 deaths. The discrepancy “highlight[s] the failure of a… system blighted by secrecy, disorganization [and] weak oversight,” the series began. “An exhaustive analysis revealed alarming trends the government has never identified: A third of children who die in care are babies, another third are teenagers and the vast majority are Aboriginal.”

Then, late in 2016, Journal columnist Paula Simons, working from a report delivered by the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate (OCYA), dug up information outlining the horrific conditions surrounding the death of a First Nations girl. That Serenity had died in kinship care complicated the picture. The review “revealed that the relatives with whom the girl had been placed had been poorly trained and that the home study of their family had been cursory,” Simons wrote. “The review also found Serenity and her two older half-siblings had been left in the guardianship of this couple despite complaints and tips about abuse. No workers had checked on the three children in the 11 months before Serenity died.” Simons was also able to access information unavailable to Child and Youth Advocate Del Graff and unearthed the full circumstances of the girl’s death, including a stalled police investigation because of a lack of follow-up reports.

PC and NDP governments alike have responded the same way: by convening political bodies to review child deaths, and by not including Indigenous representation.

In 2014 the Child Intervention Roundtable, called by Human Services Minister Manmeet Bhullar, delivered recommendations to improve the system and its account-ability. But party leadership volatility, cabinet shuffling, a provincial election and a subsequent change in government stifled action.

Some 225 young Albertans have died in foster care since 2008.
Of these, 131 were Indigenous.

When Premier Rachel Notley announced her first cabinet in 2015, Bhullar’s roundtable’s recommendations—which included more power to the Office of the Medical Examiner to access government information in order to investigate deaths of children in care—remained buried within the sprawling Human Services ministry. In July 2016 Graff and Auditor General Merwan Saher simultaneously released reports indicating that the government could not make the systemic changes necessary to reduce the number of Indigenous kids in care as long as Children’s Services remained under the large umbrella of Human Services.

It took the release of OCYA’s November 2016 investigative review on 4-year-old Serenity (then known as “Marie”)—and Simons’s report—for the NDP government to respond. In January 2017 Notley announced the creation of an all-party panel to investigate the child intervention system and named Danielle Larivee as minister of a new, standalone Children’s Services.

From the very beginning, Indigenous leaders were critical of the creation of yet another panel. That money would be better spent supporting families and children on the ground than on talking about the issue again, says Donald Langford, executive director with Metis Child and Family Services. He points to a bookshelf in his office full of reports with recommendations commissioned by various PC governments and later abandoned. “I’ve been involved in so many working groups and committees that I just quit going to them,” he says. “I’ve seen no progress.”

Langford says the new panel’s first recommendations, released in April 2017, have already been presented in some form or another through other panels or studies: increased authority for the OCYA, greater accountability for preventable deaths, timely completion of reviews, better supports for families, greater cultural sensitivity and improved information sharing.

Worse than retreaded recommendations, he says, is yet another panel lacking Indigenous representation. Patti Laboucane-Benson, a Metis woman with Native Counselling Services of Alberta, was included only as an expert witness as the panel considered the death review process. In May, when the panel moved into its second phase—to look more broadly at the child intervention system—Larivee responded to criticism from the Indigenous community by appointing Siksika Health CEO Tyler White.

But two Indigenous people on the panel doesn’t satisfy Langford. “We still have a residential school environment being run by an Indian agent mentality,” he said. “Unless you’ve got Aboriginal eyes, you’re not going to look at it through an Aboriginal lens.”

That “Aboriginal lens” means engaging with families in a holistic manner—placing children in kinship care (i.e., with family, in their own culture) whenever possible. It means providing foster families with supports and checking in with them regularly. It means building respectful relationships between Indigenous families and government service pro-viders. But forming those relationships is difficult considering the high turnover of frontline government staff, their lack of knowledge of Indigenous culture, and the lack of Indigenous caseworkers. Couple that with limited resources both for organizations working with Indigenous children in cities and for designated First Nation authorities on reserves.

He points to a bookshelf of reports with recommendations by various PC governments and later abandoned.

Liberal MLA and panel member Dr. David Swann believes more Indigenous representation—on the panel and throughout child intervention services—would help the government better understand the problems it’s dealing with. “If you don’t have staff that come from that community, I think it’s somewhat disingenuous for us to say that we’re going to have a First Nations cultural lens,” Swann told media in April. ​“How do we get more First Nations people trained and into the child services programs?” He also wants bands to be more involved with the death review process.

Frieda Alook-Gambler with the Bigstone Nation Council presented to the panel in May 2017. “If you guys want to make decisions and really impact the number of cases that are happening on our First Nations, talk to us and ask us how we can help our kids,” she told the panel. “We want as First Nations to provide the services we need for our kids because we understand and we know where these kids are coming from and living.”

Langford has been involved with child and family services for 32 years and doesn’t believe that any government—this one included—understands the concept of true engagement. “To engage our community, you form a relationship, and that relationship moves forward built on respect, consideration and optimism,” he says. “Work with the families, get to know them.”

Working with families means pursuing a cultural connection, says Child and Youth Advocate Del Graff. “A young Indigenous person who has a sense of identity, knows who they are, knows where they belong, knows what their value base is, that has people around them who both support them and challenge them to continue to develop their sense of identity and strength—those are factors of resilience that help the young person when they face difficulties.”

“Voices for Change,” the July 2016 report from Graff’s office, was nearly two years in the making, with information gathered from government, social workers, children, youth and caregivers. Previous reports were reviewed and the OCYA’s experience considered. Eight recommendations were made, including “increasing the use of kinship care for Aboriginal children by improving support for kinship caregivers.” The report notes the “onerous” approval process and that kinship families are assessed on their past, not “for who they are today.”

Indeed, many Indigenous families have a past relationship with Child Intervention Services, including Kohkom Kathy. Her children were once wards of the government, and she says that reason was given for why she didn’t qualify to care for her granddaughters—including baby Dani—when they were apprehended.

She admits no care model is flawless. The treatment leading to Serenity’s death occurred while the little girl was in kinship care. Kathy and other critics say a culturally appropriate placement with family is still the best option in most cases and that all options need to be diligently monitored by caseworkers.

Graff’s report into Serenity’s case identified two systemic issues: risk assessment and case planning. Along with better support for kinship caregivers, his recommendations include a culturally relevant home study specific to kinship care and its unique challenges; mandatory kinship care orientation training; and that caseworkers be just as diligent when a child comes out of kinship care as when a child goes into care. This report was the third by Graff that included recommendations on kinship care.

Echoing Langford, “Voices for Change” also called for the province to establish a new relationship with Indigenous peoples, outlining the need for “establishing full and equal partnership between governments and Aboriginal communities in the development of authorities, resources, practices and outcomes.”

Graff says that new relationship shouldn’t get hung up in jurisdictional battles. “You have like-minded people who want to make a change—federal, provincial, First Nations, political groups. If they all want change, how can jurisdiction possibly be a barrier It’s just a problem to solve.”

Seventeen designated First Nation authorities operate within Alberta’s 46 First Nations, handling child welfare services legislated by the province’s Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act while being federally funded. Debbie LaRiviere, director with the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council, told the panel in May that provincial programming “doesn’t seem to fit some of our families we work with on the First Nation.” Unique factors include isolated communities, three or four households in a single home, extreme poverty, and a lack of services such as psychologists and child intervention workers. Yvonne Johnson, director with Bigstone Cree Social Services Society, adds that caseloads are too heavy—her local authority has two caseworkers handling 56 cases. “It’s straight crisis management,” she says. “No real meaningful work can really happen with that.”

Lack of federal funding is also an issue. In 2016 the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that Canada discriminates against families on reserves by providing child welfare funding at a much lower rate than provinces’ off-reserve funding. The CHRT also upheld Jordan’s Principle, which says First Nations children must receive the health and social services they require before different levels of government wrangle over who covers the costs. But despite a Trudeau government statement in February that it is “working swiftly” to implement Jordan’s Principle, the gap remains.

Most past OCYA recommendations haven’t been imple-mented—despite the province ostensibly having accepted them. New legislation, including the Child Protection and Accountability Act, passed in June 2017 following the panel’s first phase of recommendations, does not guarantee implementation of anything brought forward by the OCYA. It does, however, increase the OCYA’s mandate to review every death of a child under 20 who was receiving government services or had received services within two years prior to their death. “I would have liked to have seen the government be held to stronger account for the recommendations we make,” says Graff.

That view was also expressed by Saher last October. The Auditor General proposed a legislative standing committee that would help ensure the implementation of the OCYA’s recommendations.

But giving such power to the OCYA doesn’t sit well with the Children’s Services Minister. “Independent legislative officers are there to provide information, advice and guidance to the government—but nowhere are these actually directives,” minister Danielle Larivee says. “That would actually take away the power of the government and [its] independence to be able to fulfill its role.” The Standing Committee on Legislative Offices, an all-party body, agrees with Larivee. None of the nine recommendations it brought forward on June 21 upon completing its year-long review of the Child and Youth Advocate Act gives more strength to Graff’s office. The standing committee recommends only that a member of the OCYA be present, along with relevant department officials, when an OCYA report is being considered by a committee of the assembly.

Larivee points out that Graff delivers his reports publicly and as such the public can hold the government responsible. To her critics, she’d say: “Just please engage in good faith. Please know we are committed to this. Give us the opportunity and I’ll show you when we’re done and we’ll take action.”

Graff, however, doesn’t believe the situation is high on the public’s priority list, and therefore isn’t high on the government’s. “Politicians pay attention to what’s being demanded by constituents,” he says. “If constituents care about an issue, they elevate it and politicians respond. When I speak about apathy—at a community level we’re not hearing concern for vulnerable Indigenous children and their families. We’re not hearing enough volume to create a demand for change that politicians need to act on.”

As Indigenous people account for 6 per cent of the province’s population, change won’t occur until the non-Indigenous population speaks out, contends Graff.

Larivee says she’s proud of the legislation her government has passed, saying it strengthens recommendations made by the panel. She also points to what she calls a “culture shift” towards openness within public organizations that now must share relevant information with the OCYA in its investigations.

She says her government should be judged on the work it’s undertaking now, which includes building relationships and capacity with Indigenous communities. “I’m not going to say I’m going to turn it around overnight,” says Larivee. “It’s a complex issue rooted in very complex problems that have existed for a very long time. We will just continue taking steps forward.”

But those are stuttering steps, Graff says. “The government isn’t responding fast enough and in a complete enough way…. [it’s] certainly nowhere near where it has to be to actually change the tide in child welfare.”

Edmonton’s Shari Narine has spent the past decade covering Indigenous issues for provincial and national publications.

The post Fixing Foster Care appeared first on Alberta Views.

The Manning government, how-ever, unwittingly sparked a golden age for high-quality daycare in Alberta when it passed innovative legislation in mid-1966 specifying that municipal governments could establish preventive social services (PSS). The initiative took advantage of new federal funding in the Canada Assistance Plan, also introduced in 1966, which meant that the cost of programs initiated by a municipality would be shared 20/30/50 per cent by municipal, provincial and federal governments respectively.

I say unwittingly because, although provincial civil servants championed daycare as the sort of “preventive social service” that municipalities should initiate, the Social Credit cabinet wasn’t entirely sold on the idea. In late 1967 Alf Hooke, Alberta’s minister of public welfare, rejected Edmonton’s request for PSS funding for a new “model daycare” to be located in the Glengarry recreation centre and run by the city. Hooke told the Edmonton Journal that full-scale, government-supported daycare programs “are for the birds.” He said “There are a lot better places the government can put its money than into babysitting services” and indicated he’d rather pay needy mothers to stay at home with their children than support daycare. The minister added that daycare for people who choose to work “can be left to private enterprise.”

Universal daycare is a preventive investment in kids, with long-term benefits to society.

The controversy reveals a philosophical divide over the care of young children that persists to the present day. But good daycare has demonstrated positive social outcomes for young children and their families. The Alberta government has taken on considerable financial and regulatory responsibility for daycare services in the past 50 years. The next step should be the introduction of universal daycare.

Our government uses the umbrella term “child care” to cover a wide range of group care programs for children, and restricts “day care” to full-day programs outside of a private residence for children aged 0–6. Among academics, the term “early childhood education and care” has replaced both daycare and child care in recognition of the importance of “learning through play” in well-designed programs. I prefer the somewhat archaic “universal daycare,” partly because it’s shorthand for “universal early childhood education and care” but also because we not only readily know what “daycare” means without having to do a Google search, but invariably have strong opinions on whether it’s a good thing or not.

Alf Hooke’s 1967 comments invoked beliefs that still inform daycare policy discussions today. Those who favour child care by stay-at-home parents view the traditional two-parent family with a breadwinner and a stay-at-home parent as ideal. They oppose public investment in regulated daycare, arguing that governments should make it easier for parents to care for children in their own homes. Other viewpoints inform today’s conversations around childcare policy. Some promote the unfettered provision of daycare services by private businesses. Some see society as individualist and highly competitive, with quality daycare as a means to cultivate individuals with the skills and aptitudes to be successful in such a competitive environment. Others see high-quality daycare as a way to reduce gender, class and generational inequities, and daycares as sites for building community rather than as mere providers of service. Establishing not-for-profit or public daycares with high parental involvement is their priority.

Photo: Tadzio Richards, Location: Sun Valley Kids Academy and Montessori Daycare. 

The strong and unrelenting public protest against Hooke’s comments prompted Ernest Manning to overrule his minister on the Glengarry daycare decision, which established a precedent for the funding of high-quality daycare in Alberta. Proposals for new daycares soon came in from across the province, with Edmonton, Calgary and Medicine Hat leading the way. By 1978 Alberta had over 60 such municipally sponsored daycares. Their proponents saw them as exemplars for the quality of care all children should experience.

Indeed, in the 1970s the City of Edmonton believed it had “by far the best daycare program in terms of quality” in the country, with its strengths including community involvement and the integration of health, recreation, education and social services. For instance, the city-run Glengarry daycare was part of a multi-service complex that included counselling and homemaking services. The city’s social workers based at the complex organized mother’s-day-out programs, and mothers in the community were encouraged to volunteer at the daycare to improve their child care skills. The daycare was close to both a swimming pool (where the children took lessons) and a city-run public health clinic. Besides routine programs such as immunization, the health clinic administered standardized screening to identify children with developmental delays.

Alberta’s preventive social service system of high-quality daycares was phased out starting in the late 1970s. The Peter Lougheed government chose instead to rapidly expand the number of subsidized spaces. Despite the strength of “pro-family” conservatism in Alberta, Lougheed and subsequent governments were motivated, even up to the present day, to invest considerable public money in regulated child care because of mothers’ high rate of labour force participation. By 2015, 60 per cent of Alberta mothers with a youngest child aged 0–2 were in the labour force, as were 72 per cent of mothers with a youngest child aged 3–5.

Government subsidizes daycare so that parents can afford regulated services. Subsidizing daycare has proven cost-effective, since it increases income tax revenue and decreases public spending on social assistance. Government regulates daycare because young children are vulnerable. The province stimulated a rapid expansion in regulated daycare by paying generous operating allowances for each filled space.

Private businesses, including a few daycare chains, extended their role in the Alberta daycare system throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s as free market conservatism shaped public policies. The ending of operating allowances in 1999, however, made it much harder to achieve a sizeable return on investments in daycares. During the dark days at the end of the Klein era (2005–06) Alberta ranked dead last among provinces in spending on child care.

In 2013–14 the province spent $263-million on regulated child care (including after-school care for older kids), with about half of this ($127-million) going to income-tested subsidies. Most of the rest went to initiatives such as staff wage enhancements and centre accreditation, which provide benefits to all children enrolled in a program. Alberta spent $2,657 per regulated child care space in 2013–14, well behind Saskatchewan, Quebec and Manitoba (ranging from $4,870 to $4,407) and ranked seventh among the 10 provinces.

In recent years the daycare agenda has been shaped by those who aim to reduce the number of people on welfare; to this end, quality daycare is targeted at “at risk” children as a cost-effective way to improve human capital and the independence of children and parents.

The case for universal publicly funded daycare is not an easy sell. “Universal” means available to everyone. Publicly funded means no parental fees for any program, since even modest fees can discourage enrolment by lower-income families. But as University of Calgary population health researchers Lindsay McLaren and Lynn McIntyre note, “There is a powerful logic to directing efforts and resources to those who need them most.”

Edmonton’s integrated public daycares—”by far the best in terms of quality” in the country—were phased out in the late 1970s.

However, targeting only poor families has the unintended consequence of excluding many children in middle-income families—the majority of Alberta children—from high-quality daycare. Lower-income families’ participation in such programs would be subsidized, while higher-income families aren’t deterred by the costs of high-quality daycare (currently $1,000 or more per month for a 3–4-year-old in Calgary). Middle-income families, however, are particularly price sensitive when it comes to child care, simply because they don’t have much discretionary income. These families tend to eschew high-quality care in favour of lower-cost options (sometimes regulated but often not). This is an understandable decision when parents are struggling for money—especially when so many are unaware of the consequential differences between mere child-minding and well-conceived early childhood education and care. Universal daycare of uniformly high quality would free middle-income parents from having to choose low-cost child care to balance the budget, and it would create a level playing field across economic classes.

Targeting support by conventional measures such as family income is also problematic because it fails to identify the majority of children “at risk” and most in need of the comprehensive benefits of high-quality daycare. As researcher Gillian Doherty wrote in 2007, “Vulnerable children live in families across all income levels and in both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations. Although the incidence of vulnerability is highest among children in poverty, the largest number of children, approximately 75 per cent, live in middle-income households.” Universal daycare would allow for more accurately targeted support because a greater number of vulnerable children would be enrolled and their needs (and those of their families) would become apparent to trained staff.

A variety of specialized programs would give these children and their families the extra assistance they need. Universal daycare is therefore not just an alternative to targeted support but a way to deliver interventions to children who otherwise wouldn’t appear on the province’s radar until kindergarten. These interventions shouldn’t be left to the school-age years, since, as an impressive recent body of research on brain development has demonstrated, many human competencies are formed in the preschool years, with much neural circuitry being established in the brain of the developing child.

Selective targeting has the additional drawback of stigmatizing a program and its participants. McLaren and McIntyre argue that it presents a “significant risk of further marginalizing, excluding and compromising the dignity of those who are already most disadvantaged.” As a consequence, many families don’t place their children in targeted programs, to avoid the hassle of the screening process or any association with a service for “the needy.” A universal program, however, carries no stigma and encourages the enrolment of more children in need of early interventions to promote cognitive, language and social-emotional capacities.

Although universal daycare up to age 5 would be voluntary, the enrolment rate would likely be high so long as full-day and part-day programs were available. Universal care would thus become a common and integral experience in the lives of families with young children. Two further benefits would flow from this high participation rate.

Just as universality would create class equity in access to high-quality daycare, it would promote gender equity too. Child care in Canadian families remains largely women’s work and responsibility, so the widespread availability of universal, high-quality daycare would lighten the burden (of work and worry) on all women who access the service, in turn giving them more opportunities to pursue career or education opportunities even while their children are young. This would have positive long-term impacts for many women (including on lifetime earnings) and reduce gender inequity in the world of work.

Because Canadian society is becoming more diverse, we need to find new ways to promote social integration. Universal daycare could be just that—an initiative in multicultural understanding and for fostering civic responsibility. It’s even possible that universal daycare could become as important to Canadian identity as universal healthcare—an institutional signpost of our common commitment to creating the best possible beginnings for the lives of children.

Universal daycare could one day become as important to Canadian identity as medicare.

By promoting high participation, universality would be a gateway to crucial learning about Canadian society for young children and their parents. Early childhood education curricula, along with participants’ diverse backgrounds and needs, would encourage respectful understanding of social differences. Parents and daycare professionals would share a common interest in the well-being of children that supersedes their differences. Where programs encourage a high degree of parental participation and responsibility, they would foster community development.

In Canada much is spent on programs for and transfers to seniors, post-secondary students and school-aged children, but little goes to young children. Universal daycare would rebalance this disparity. While new investments in child care can be justified by pointing to expected future economic benefits (e.g., reduced penal costs and increased tax revenues from more capable and productive citizens), they can also be justified from a children’s rights perspective. High-quality early childhood education and care programs would enrich children’s lives. The quality of child–parent interactions would improve because universal daycare lessens the financial burden and time pressure on parents, and it models elements of effective caregiving. Universal daycare would be the village in “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Such a system would employ thousands of new early-childhood professionals. Alberta currently has lax training requirements for regulated childcare workers. Accredited centres can operate with a majority of staff whose only training is a 58-hour orientation course. A universal system would require workers with at least a two-year diploma in early childhood education and care. These would be good jobs—the work interesting and socially important, and the compensation fair. In a globalized economy where manufacturing and service jobs are easily moved offshore, and where employment in oil and gas fluctuates unpredictably with commodity prices, an expanded childcare workforce would stabilize the economy. Government subsidization would have a high multiplier effect on the provincial economy because child development workers spend most of their wages in local markets.

High-quality universal daycare would be a preventive investment in young children, with a return on that investment over time. While parents would benefit in the short term, the projected long-term benefits would flow to society. Children are the taxpayers of tomorrow, responsible for government debt and public pensions. Universal daycare could raise the public’s consciousness of the many ways our society’s long-term health depends on the next generation, creating further “buy-in” to the necessity of public investment in young children.

Two crucial first steps would reduce opposition to universal daycare. Existing commercial operators should be invited to participate in the revamped system even as we restrict new licensees to public institutions (e.g., school boards or municipalities) or not-for-profits. In 2014, for-profit operators in Alberta controlled 53 per cent of the centre-based spaces for children aged 0–12, well above the Canadian average of 30 per cent. Part-day programs should be an important part of a universal system, to allow young children who are looked after privately by a parent, grandparent or nanny to benefit as well.

Even though Alberta’s budget is in dire straits, now’s the perfect time to get the ball rolling on universal daycare. The federal government is promising to negotiate new child care deals with the provinces along the lines of the Early Learning and Child Care agreements that were cancelled by the Harper government in 2006. This will result in a significant infusion of new funds. Also, if universal daycare is cautiously implemented there will be time to reorder Alberta’s finances before the full force of the new spending kicks in.

In the past a majority of Albertans erroneously believed that any sort of daycare service was as good as the next, and young children did not deserve the kind of public investment that was being made in transportation infrastructure, early tar sands development, hospitals and physician services and agricultural subsidies. Research, however, has unambiguously demonstrated the importance of experiences in children’s early years. Most parents continue to find it difficult to pay for high-quality daycare. It is time to build a new pillar of social security, solidarity and competitive advantage for Alberta in the 21st century—universal daycare.

Tom Langford, a sociology professor at U of C, is the author of Alberta’s Day Care Controversy: From 1908 to 2009 and Beyond.

The post It Takes A Village appeared first on Alberta Views.

“Miss Grace” is a 50-something Nigerian-born library assistant with a hearty laugh, a penchant for bright clothing and an enthusiasm for taking on new challenges, such as more than 50 foster kids in seven years. At her kitchen table, she displays their gifts—drawings, a handmade wooden box and a metal square with a runner painted on the front. Its creator was a boy from Sudan who would race around the block at 4:00 a.m. Today, she says with pride, he’s a competitive athlete.

She and her husband, Joseph, invite me to their home on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a Calgary classic—beige stucco, four bedrooms, a two-car garage in front. Their youngest daughter, a teen, is on her way out. Their two foster kids are out with one of their older daughters. Their two boys are grown and living away from home.

With Grace working full time, it is Joseph, now retired from a warehouse job, who enrolled their two foster children in school, who takes them to their doctor and dentist appointments. Because the siblings were apprehended—taken from their biological parents—while at day camp, they came only with knapsacks, so the Oyelusis shopped for them that evening: clothes, PJs, toothbrushes.

Alberta has the highest rate of kids in care in the world: 111 foster children per 10, 000 residents.

“The children walked in the door, what did you do then?” I ask.

“First I gave them some dinner,” Grace says. “Then I found out they liked dancing so I put on some music, and said, ‘OK, I need to learn some moves’. ” The message to the kids: “There are some things your parents need to do before you can go back.”

It’s an awkward fact of life that some 9,000 children call the Alberta government their legal parent. Under our Child & Youth Enhancement Act, kids under 18 must be taken out of unsafe situations. But where to put them Where possible, the government prefers a family environment, so it seeks foster parents. The government runs its own foster care program, and contracts agencies across the province as well. Of Alberta’s 9,000 wards, 4,650 are foster children, 2,300 are in kinship care (where someone known to the child steps in and receives income support), 376 are in permanency placements (where kids are about to be adopted or receive permanent guardians), 671 are in group homes, 415 are in residential centres and 592 are in independent living (usually those close to the age of 18), placement related to their health needs, secure services, a youth justice facility or in a Protection of Sexually Exploited Children facility.

In all, Alberta spends $156-million annually on foster parents, their workers and campaigns to recruit them.

And Alberta is unique when it comes to foster care. According to a 2004 international study of child welfare by June Thorburn of East Anglia University in England, Alberta’s kids tend to enter government care relatively late in life, and most are apprehended by the government as opposed to given up by parents. Out of all the jurisdictions surveyed, Alberta had the highest rate of kids in care: 111 per 10,000 residents, compared to Japan at 17 or Australia at 49.

There are never enough homes for all of these children, especially for those with complicated needs. Last year, the Alberta government commissioned market research on foster parents; it’s a document so secret, apparently, that a government official is only permitted by higher-ups to read parts over the phone. “The key insights,” she reads: “Foster parents feel philosophically committed and personally responsible to the whole of society. They truly love children and have an ability to connect with and understand children. Children fill a gap in their life. They do not expect it to be easy. They value the long-term rewards; they do not see themselves as heroes.”

Campaigns to recruit more foster parents in Alberta are ongoing. The latest government effort is “A Child’s Hope,” a brochure and website produced by Edmonton’s Incite Communications. Before that, Scout Communications of Calgary developed a website and ad campaign. I call Scout partner Lois Lockwood to find out more, and ask if she knows any foster parents. She doesn’t. Neither do I. Nor do most people. There are 2,280 foster homes in the province. With a trend to two parents in the workforce, few Albertans need the added income of about $30–$50 a day per child or the hassle of parenting a child from a troubled background.

Yet getting people to sign on as foster parents is key to the whole system. Some 66 per cent of kids are with unrelated foster parents—parents such as Grace and Joseph Oyelusi, who emigrated from Nigeria to Winnipeg in 1974. They came to Calgary when they heard it was warmer. “I guess they forgot to tell us about Victoria,” Grace laughs. When I meet her, she gives me a list she calls “issues in fostering.” At the top: allegations of abuse (false or true against foster parents) as well a poor image in the media and community.

“I want to do it with happiness, but I understand the risks,” she says. Yes, kids do die in care; some are killed or injured by their foster parents, others commit suicide. Because the government won’t allow foster kids to speak to media, or be identified in the media as foster children, we often only glimpse problems from court documents.

For child welfare in Alberta, 2009 was quite a bad year. Alberta’s director of child welfare, Richard Ouellet, was found in contempt of court for failing to obey a court order to return a foster child to his foster parents. A 24-year-old was charged with manslaughter for killing a 4-year-old in her care. A baby was seriously hurt in foster care in Strathmore.

These types of problems are often dealt with not by systemic changes but by procedural ones. Jean Lafrance, a University of Calgary professor and the former Alberta Children’s Advocate (responsible for ensuring that Alberta’s children have a voice), says that kids hurt in care create even more procedures for foster parents. These include personal references, at least 31 preparatory courses, yearly evaluations, medical checks, police checks and a home safety check. “Added regulations discourage foster parents,” Lafrance says. Added regulations for case workers “[also] discourage relationship-building with the child’s biological family,” he argues.

“Front-line workers say ‘We want healthy relationships with our clients, but all these things get in the way.’ They’re loaded down with paperwork, [which is] created to avoid some sort of tragedy.” The government, he says, is misguided. “There’s always this hope that ‘we’ll get it right this time, we’ll add another procedure’. ”

Lafrance writes in a not-yet-published paper: “The majority of child apprehensions are not a result of physical or sexual abuse. In fact, most apprehensions are the result of a parent’s struggle with poverty, addictions, mental health issues or family violence.”

“Foster kids are little spirits that are hurting in some way and just need someone to care for them.”

Dwayne and Nancy Clayden of Airdrie are face to face with addiction’s outcomes. These foster parents are seven-year veterans who specialize in babies, and they’ve cared for drug-addicted infants. I manage to catch Dwayne at home on his day off. The couple have four children of their own (14 to 21 years old), work in the medical field and, as Mormons, want to act on their social values. The Claydens are Alberta’s reigning Foster Parents of the Year, so named by the Alberta Foster Parents Association. It’s not hard to see why.

Clayden is positive: “Most of the time [fostering] has been outstanding; the kids are little spirits that are hurting in some way and need someone to care for them,” he says. In all, the Claydens have fostered about 37 kids. “There was one baby we picked up at the hospital, we knew it was bad, and had to bring her back to the hospital for treatment every day—she died after a month and a half,” says Clayden. The effect on his own children “I think they’re going to be excellent parents,” he says. “They know how to care for kids, they’ve held a baby on crack having a seizure, they know the dangers of drug use while pregnant.”

Clayden says the hardest part of fostering is seeing the kids leave. One infant went to live with her grandmother after a year; twin baby girls went to live with a relative after a year, too. When he sits on his couch, he sees the wall with all of his foster kids’ photos. These days, the Clayden home is unnaturally quiet. They just handed over a baby they’d fostered every day of her 17-month life. “We’d anticipated she’d be going back, but when the day came and we physically handed her over, I just crumpled to the floor and cried,” he says. However, they just heard she’ll be coming back to them for the weekend, so they aren’t taking any more foster kids in case the little girl still needs a home.

It seems that stories about foster care run along two predictable scripts: foster parents are either selfless, or they’re embattled in court (sometimes both). The Oyelusis and Claydens and many other families bear the former out. Sadly, the latter script is as well known to many Albertans.

But there’s another key issue. Eight per cent of Alberta’s 827,000 children are Aboriginal, and yet they comprise 56 per cent of the kids in government care. There’s been a move to promote kinship care, to provide financial assistance to families to keep Aboriginal kids within their culture.

Bernadette Iahtail works with the not-for-profit Circle of Hope in Edmonton. Her mission is “an Aboriginal home by 2025 for every child.” She is Swampi Cree and was apprehended from her home on James Bay, Ontario, as a young child. She lived with dozens of foster families until she ran away as a teen. “I always say I was adaptable, not adoptable,” she laughs. Now a registered social worker, Iahtail is 51 years old, self-describes as resilient and demonstrates a can-do attitude. When she saw a man she liked at a pool, she sent a friend over, “Go find out if he’s married.” He wasn’t, and now he has been Iahtail’s husband for eight years.

She knows all too well the child welfare syndrome: feeling very, very alone, feeling you don’t matter. Iahtail wants to help kids but doesn’t want the scrutiny that is levelled at foster parents. She says kinship care comes with fewer rules—but also less money and less support from workers. This creates stress, such as in the case of the 24-year-old Albertan accused of manslaughter in 2009 who was saddled with five young relatives under kinship care rules. “She didn’t have the support,” Iahtail says. The legacy for Aboriginal kids in Alberta is particularly rough, and hearkens to similar themes: addiction, poverty, young mothers without support.

Experts are critical of the government: “We need to support the family and address the root causes of poverty.”

From the Piikani reserve, near Brocket, 30 km west of Lethbridge, Peter Strikes with a Gun speaks to me by phone and tells me he has a bit of time before the kids arrive home from school. He is 67, a former reserve chief and volunteer addictions counsellor, fluent speaker of Blackfoot, drummer, gospel singer and foster father. He lives with Jeannie Provost, his second wife, two grandkids, one adopted son and two foster children, both Aboriginal.

Strikes with a Gun is sympathetic to children dealing with loss. His mother died of cancer when he was 8. His wife saw her mother die of tuberculosis when she was young, too. He attended a residential school and watched alcohol take down member after member on the reserve. After landing in jail, he was placed in an addictions centre in Calgary at age 25 and stuck with the program. He tells me he has celebrated his 30th year of sobriety.

He is concerned about kids living with parents with addictions. “The parents really don’t know the risks; a person under the influence or taking alcohol and drugs… a lot of things can happen, a house can burn down, [a parent] might never come home. Sometime the [child’s] apprehension sets the parents free. They can start helping themselves deal with drinking.”

Strikes with a Gun and his wife have fostered 22 kids over 19 years. “We like having children around. The intent of our fostering is to try to maintain their roots, [to help kids] understand their family trees. When children are removed there’s a lot of cultural shock.” But there aren’t enough people like him, people who can provide Aboriginal homes.

The U of C’s Lafrance is deeply critical of the government for the number of Aboriginal kids taken from their home. “Aboriginal kids don’t do well in foster care. We need to support the family, address the root causes of poverty.” He makes an argument sure to appeal to a fiscal Albertan: “Taking a kid out of a home is a million-dollar decision. The courts are involved, social workers are involved; 32 people are involved in the life of that child. Why not use the money to support the family at home?”

Back to that jacket toggle. When is a little bit of black plastic a lot more than a little bit of black plastic What does it represent?

Gratitude?

A desperate struggle for connection?

The struggle to hang on in some form or another?

Foster kids know many homes. Fewer than 3 per cent are adopted. Sometimes they’re in emergency care until a permanent placement can be found. Or they go into respite care to give the foster parents a break.

A study commissioned by the government found that foster parents were most satisfied with their case workers, but least satisfied with the rate of pay or “maintenance fees” (only 56 per cent satisfied) and skill fees given for additional training (only 54 per cent satisfied). But the biggest problem was the lack of a break from fostering, known as respite care (only 45 per cent felt it was adequate). Foster parents often must find their own respite care, and kids must go to other approved foster parents. They have to pay out of pocket for respite care: the government offers a subsidy of $2.60 per day.

The lack of time off from fostering scares many people away, says Grace Oyelusi. It’s the reason she’s had so many kids over the years.

She was introduced to fostering by a woman at her Pentecostal church. Like many, she and her husband thought about it over the years. At first she thought the free courses would be good training, and took days off work to attend them. Joseph went at her wife’s insistence. “She’s the boss,” says Joseph, eliciting a poke from his wife. “I have a lot of respect for Grace. I thought ‘If she thinks it’s a good idea, then I’ll go to the training.’ It’s really changed our lives, especially the way we look at people with mental disabilities.”

When it came time to take in their first child, it wasn’t an easy case. The boy brought over by Child Services had fetal alcohol syndrome and he ran frantically all over the house. She and Joseph decided against taking him.

But then Grace pondered the situation. Maybe their house wasn’t the best place to see him. “I said to Joseph, ‘Why don’t we try again?’ ” They took him to the park, swimming, to the mall. Things went better and the boy was with them for five years. He was well supported with a teacher’s aide and a social worker. In the end, his adoptive father died, leaving the Oyelusis as the trustees for a small estate. Their daughter now takes care of him outside the home as part of AISH’s supportive roommate program.

The Oyelusis have had their challenges. One foster child stole from a local store; he was angry because his sister was adopted and he wasn’t. “She was very cute, very beautiful, but cuteness doesn’t make problems go away,” Grace says. The school doesn’t want one of their current foster kids at lunch, owing to behaviour problems. Joseph is unsure if he can pick her up every day; she might need another family.

Besides working at the library, Grace serves as a recruiter and supporter for foster parents. She works as a mentor and also co-parents kids at risk. She has some wisdom after all the years and the 57 kids that have been through the home: “No matter how bad things were at home, they always want to go home.”

Other foster parents admit they’ve thought “After everything I’ve done for them, they want to go home?” Of course they want to go home. Besides, foster parents are not in charge.

“You need to remember the government is their parent,” says Oyelusi. “I document everything to send to the government. One boy told me he couldn’t hear out of one ear. I wrote that down and faxed it over. What if the police ask him to stop and he doesn’t I want it documented.”

It’s not for everyone. Jeannie is a foster mother no more. She fostered in Ontario for years before coming to Alberta in the late 1990s. Because her husband holds elected office she’s asked her last name not be used. Her fostering ended about 10 years ago on the shores of a 2-year-old’s breakdown. This foster child’s mother was drug-addicted, Jeannie says, and had given up parental rights; the father was in jail on sexual abuse charges. “I believe the little girl was abused,” she says. “After years as a foster mother, you get to know the signs.”

Jeannie and her husband were considering adopting the child, when the court ordered visits to the father in Bowden prison, hours away from their Alberta town. When the car came to get her—with a male driver—the little girl was shrieking and crying “No bad daddy, no bad daddy!” Jeannie said she had to peel the toddler from her arms. “I called Child Welfare and told them I disagreed, and was told to keep my opinions to myself. I said, ‘Then come get her, I’m done with fostering.’ ”

She now has a large, empty, four-bedroom house. “A friend told me she was thinking of fostering, and I said ‘Run, run like the wind.’ ”

But some don’t. The Oyelusis remember a landlord who let them clean his daughter’s home in exchange for rent, who gave them furniture. The Victorian Order of Nurses helped Grace when she was overwhelmed with her first-born. “So many people were good to us when we came to Canada, we want to give back,” she says.

Dwayne Clayden thinks child welfare workers try their best. “It’s easy to be critical and say ‘This isn’t working,’ but what solution are you going to come up with?”

And that boy who gave Grace Oyelusi a piece of his jacket She’s never seen him again. Their connection ends with clinking in a glass jar.

Janice Paskey teaches journalism at Mount Royal University in Calgary and is the mother of two boys.

The post Temporary Parents appeared first on Alberta Views.

Despite the wait, the uncertainty and the eventual cost of the daycare, McFadyen, who now works for the City of Edmonton, considers her position to be privileged. “There are a lot of people who have children who are really alone,” she says. “They don’t have parents who help or savings.”

When it comes to childcare, Alberta is unique. Despite a booming population, daycare capacity has shrunk during the past decade; there are presently fewer than 53,000 daycare centre spots for 163,400 mothers of preschoolers. Until funding announcements last spring, Alberta was rock-bottom in terms of money spent on daycare. We’re now just below average. Compared to other provinces, we also have an unusually high percentage of for-profit daycares—a daycare model which research shows consistently performs below not-for-profits.

Perhaps most significantly, as McFadyen’s story attests, accessible childcare is intimately related to gender equality in the workforce. When women leave the workforce (sometimes temporarily, often for years) because they can’t find suitable childcare, they find themselves with less seniority than those people, mostly men, who never interrupted their careers. Many economists think this is the main reason why women earn 70 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts. Statistics Canada reports that the number of women in the Alberta workforce has been decreasing, while in Ontario and Quebec the number is growing. The report speculates that the availability of daycare and rising education levels for women in central Canada account for both trends.

Evidently, in Canada’s “land of opportunity,” there remains an inordinate challenge for mothers who decide (by choice or by need) to work outside the home. Despite their decreasing numbers, 65 per cent of Albertan women with young children still participated in the workforce in 2005—and those who couldn’t find a daycare spot were left to rely on the often unpredictable network of family, friends and nannies.

“Imagine that the federal government is on the verge of an election, and it’s revealed that the richest province in the country dumped $25.9-million… that had been earmarked for the creation of new daycare spaces into general revenues.” This is how Bill Moore-Kilgannon neatly summarizes an unfortunately non-hypothetical scenario. The executive director of Public Interest Alberta sits in front of a thick stack of papers, the results of a Freedom of Information request he filed in December of 2007 on behalf of PIA, a non-partisan advocacy organization based in Edmonton. In January, he was informed the search would cost $600, of which he had to pay $315.25 up front. The information wasn’t released to PIA until election day, March 3, 2008.

Too often, we focus on the wrong things when it comes to childcare: the cleanliness, the hygiene, the number of toys, the ratio of children to staff.  But the quality of the staff is the most critical component of a good daycare.

“In the end, it cost $405, he says. “This is what we got: a whole bunch of blank pages. And some of our own press releases.” He flips through the mostly white pages, estimating that 80 per cent of the document was excised under two Freedom of Information & Protection of Privacy Act provisions: the specific section 21(1)(a) (“disclosure could reasonably be expected to harm [intergovernmental] relations”) or the much broader
s. 24(1)(a) (“The head of a public body may refuse to disclose information… if the disclosure could reasonably be expected to reveal… advice, proposals, recommendations, analyses or policy options developed by or for a public body…”) The latter, as Moore-Kilgannon points out, “could mean just about anything.”

Moore-Kilgannon was specifically interested in a federal transfer of $25.9-million to our provincial government. As the Harper government made abundantly clear when it was elected in 2006, daycare was far from a priority. One of the government’s first post-election announcements was to eliminate the Liberals’ daycare strategy.

It replaced the Liberals’ nascent plan for an accessible and affordable national plan with a $100-a-month stipend that, as the rhetoric went, would enable parents to have “choice” about whether their children would stay at home with a parent or attend daycare. This money only covers a fraction of daycare fees, which in 2005 cost the average Albertan family at least $544 a month according to the Ministry of Children & Youth Services, which doesn’t distinguish between part- and full-time care (full-time care, obviously, costs more); based on a recent informal survey of Edmonton not-for-profit daycares, the average cost of full-time care in 2008 is closer to $800 a month. The federal money is considered taxable income, so very few families actually retain the $1,200 annually. The monies taxed back were announced as a $250-million initiative to increase childcare spaces—how, the federal government left up to the provinces to figure out. So the federal government sent the money with the non-binding request that it be used to increase the number of childcare spaces available in each province. Alberta’s share amounted to $25.9-million.

Still following The one thing that becomes apparent in tracking monies for childcare is the extent to which it feels like playing a shell game with government bureaucracy. “We’d been hearing from folks on the inside that the money had been dumped into general revenues,” explains Moore-Kilgannon. “[All the] while there was a crisis happening in the province with childcare, a crisis in availability, a crisis in quality, the provincial government was carrying on as if [there wasn’t].”

Spokespeople for the Ministry of Children & Youth Services claim that the provincial government anticipated the funds and included them as part of a $16-million increase in the 2007 budget. But PIA’s Freedom of Information request indicates otherwise. “It was clear that there was no advance notice coming to the province,” says Moore-Kilgannon. “The first e-mails circulated around this obviously show the top people in Children & Youth Services were hearing about it in March. …They couldn’t have budgeted for it.”

(Photo by Jay Smith)

In the fall of 2007, various media began reporting on the “lost” $25.9-million. In December, PIA filed its FOIP request. Moore-Kilgannon believes that the resulting public outcry, as well as increased pressure from major employers in the province who are having difficulty hiring because would-be employees lack childcare, resulted in the government’s funding increases in the 2008 budget.

In May, the Ministry of Children & Youth Services announced a commitment to create 14,000 new childcare spaces. It also raised provincial daycare subsidy rates according to inflation, increased the proportion of childcare professionals’ wages that the government pays, introduced some bursaries and generally increased spending.

“There’s always really nice rhetoric,” Moore-Kilgannon responds. “People think ‘oh look at the huge budget increases.’ …But you have to look at what they actually spend.”

What they actually spend is regularly about one third less than budgeted. The ministry claims this is because some funds, such as the Byzantine daycare subsidy program and the subsidy for stay-at-home parents’ programs, have less uptake than anticipated. This discrepancy between funds made available and funds actually applied for, however, amounts to approximately a third of the budget for childcare. Moore-Kilgannon wonders if ministers are rewarded proportionally for coming in under budget. After several calls to various government bodies were made, a spokesperson from Corporate Human Resources finally said that ministers’ bonuses are tied to being “fiscally responsible and accountable,” but would not explain further.

Indeed, the prevalence of conservatism in Alberta—both the fiscal and social varieties—seems to influence the government’s attitude toward childcare.

“There’s always this dynamic tension within the Conservative party,” explains Moore-Kilgannon. “For many Conservative supporters, there’s a conception of the family where the woman is meant to stay home and look after the kids. Providing quality childcare somehow undermines the traditional role of a woman. The other side of the Conservatives is the fiscal side, particularly [those concerned] with our incredible labour shortage. They see the lack of access to childcare [as] a huge barrier for women to enter the workforce.”

Nonetheless, says Moore-Kilgannon, there’s reason for optimism. “You have to look at the good news,” he says. “They’ve hugely increased the budget this year. For years, spending on childcare decreased rapidly. Finally, we’re getting back to where we were in 1992. Before, we were really rock- bottom in comparison to other provinces.”

The other good news is that the government is trending toward actually spending on daycare the amount of money they budget for it. For 2006/07, Alberta budgeted approximately $147-million for daycare, but actually spent $103.7-million, some $33-million less than announced. In 2007/08, the budget was $134-million; $121-million was actually spent, a shortfall of some $13-million, but a higher overall amount. The 2008 provincial budget was announced at $196.6-million.

Before these numbers inspire anyone to have another child, some perspective is needed. Jane Hewes, chair of Grant MacEwan College’s early childhood program, estimates that the proposed 14,000 new daycare spaces will require roughly 2,500 to 3,000 new workers. “It’s an aggressive target,” she says. “It’s clear that we need these spaces, but it’s also clear that we need quality workers to fill those spaces.”

“It isn’t unskilled work,” continues Hewes. “For me, the biggest challenge is making sure that the people who are doing this work have the knowledge and skills to do it well. And that, in my expert but humble opinion, requires post-secondary education. We do a disservice to children and families if we try to do it otherwise.”

Annually, MacEwan graduates about 80 students with an Early Childhood diploma, a two-year program providing Level Three certification. Daycare staff must have one of three levels of certification. The first is a 50-hour course that permits one to work in a daycare. The second is a one-year diploma. The third requires two years of post-secondary study at a public institution such as MacEwan (or a considerably more lax private college). Most not-for-profit daycares only hire workers who have or are actively pursuing their Level Three certification.

In response to the demands 14,000 new spaces will create, the Alberta government has put Level One certification online, and it will now grant anyone with an education degree (with or without any training specific to early childhood) Level Three equivalency. Anyone with a licensed practical nurse designation, a bachelor’s in sociology, psychology or physical education now qualifies for Level Two.

For Martha Friendly, coordinator of the Childcare Research & Resource Unit (a Canadian think tank), this is exactly the wrong response. “It’s completely contrary to research,” she says. “Early childhood education is important. What Canada is doing in regards to ECE is not consistent with research. Having a bachelor’s degree makes a difference, but [only if] it’s a BEd in ECE, not in teaching high school history… The Alberta government is correctly identifying the problem with accessibility, but it’s also a quality crisis. If you’re sacrificing quality by lowering standards, that’s a problem.”

“The announcement of 14,000 new spaces is kind of unrealistic in terms of finding quality daycare workers,” agrees Laura Ghali, a researcher with the Fraser Mustard Chair, an interdisciplinary team at the University of Calgary. The chair investigates childhood development from sociological, economic, psychological and medical perspectives.

“A tremendous amount of learning and brain development happens in the preschool period,” Ghali explains. “If children are fed properly, stimulated, if they form positive attachments to workers who are sensitive to children…”

Too often, Ghali says, we focus on the wrong things when it comes to childcare. “There are many indicators that measure the quality of the daycare environment,” she says. “Some are purely environmental: the cleanliness, the hygiene, the number of toys, the ratio of children to staff. But the quality of the staff is probably the most critical component of what makes a good, quality, daycare experience… It’s clear that many of the spaces [for childcare professionals] are being filled by people whose English language skills are low. That’s one of the critical issues that’s going to develop if we’re really pushing for 14,000 new spaces. …Where are you going to find [qualified] people?”

Ghali cites two studies. The first, “Two Years in Early Care and Education: English Literacy Levels of the Early Care and Education Workforce—A Profile and Associations with Quality of Care,” by Deborah Phillips (2002), shows that good literacy skills in childcare professionals contribute to a higher-quality care for children. The other, “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age Three,” by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risely (2003), found that early exposure to diverse and plentiful language strongly predicted future academic success. The difference in language use between “professional” and “welfare” families, extrapolated over the first three years of a child’s life, amounted to 30 million fewer words.

These studies make it abundantly clear that professional childcare is anything but “babysitting” or “childminding.” Rather, it can be a radical means of improving the fortunes of society’s less fortunate. Friendly points out that this shouldn’t be taken as an insult to anyone’s parenting skills: children from all social strata benefit from quality early-childhood education. The difference is just more marked in parents working with fewer resources.

“We focus on how many new, great Fisher Price plastic toys we have, how hot the water is for sanitizing dishes, but we don’t focus on really critical elements like how much language children hear,” adds Ghali. “A good, positive preschool or daycare environment teaches literacy and numeracy, not in a curriculum way but… when a child is playing with blocks, it’s an opportunity to talk about numbers, colours, shapes. If the childcare worker isn’t talking, it’s really a missed opportunity.”

“I was in Calgary the other day, and I saw a daycare with spaces available,” says Natalie Weller, director of childcare services for the town of Beaumont. “But they can’t have quality spaces. Not when we have 200 children on our wait list.” Weller has 25 years experience in the childcare sector, 15 of which were in Beaumont. She’s worked in private, not-for-profit and municipal daycares. According to Weller, as well as a wealth of studies, all daycares are not created equal.

Alberta is unique among Canadian provinces in its embrace of for-profit daycares. Across Canada, fully 80 per cent of daycares are not-for-profit. Nunavut and the Northwest Territories permit only not-for-profit, while Saskatchewan and Manitoba have rates in the high 90s. In Alberta, only 47 per cent of daycares are not-for-profit. Almost all the rest are for-profit, since Weller’s daycare in Beaumont is one of only two municipally run daycares in the province.

Weller notes studies showing that non-profit daycares outperform for-profits. “When the research shows that a systematic approach and non-profit and community-based childcare does better than private, why is Alberta not focusing on high-quality, accessible childcare?” asks Weller. “They could have grandfathered legislation in. They could do that with the new spaces… and permit only new, not-for-profit spaces.” [For some of the distinctions between for-profit and not-for-profit daycares, see “An Economic Perspective on the Current and Future Role of Non-Profit Provision of Early Learning and Child Care Services in Canada,” by Gordon Cleveland et al., available at www.privatization.crru.ca.]

Childcare in other provinces is often considered a social service, says Weller. “Why did [Alberta] decide to make childcare a commercial initiative?” she asks. “It’s about defending the rights of the friggin’ owners [over] children’s rights.”

In addition to licensing daycares, Alberta has a system of accreditation that distinguishes daycares that exceed the licensing standards. Accreditation is voluntary, but only daycares that participate in the program receive provincial funding. Accordingly, the government claims 95 per cent of daycares in the province are “involved” in accreditation, which means that they are either accredited (about 58 per cent of daycares), are in the 12- to 15-month process of getting accreditation, or have failed accreditation and are trying again.

Not-for-profits and for-profits are accredited under the same criteria. But Weller is skeptical of accreditation as proof that for-profit daycares are as good as not-for-profits. “There’s a variance amongst accredited [facilities],” she says. “If your caregivers are not being paid well enough, if they don’t have the understanding of child development, then those positive interactions aren’t there… To think that 95 per cent of [daycare] programs in Alberta are excellent is one big joke.”

Cathy Ducharme, spokesperson for the Ministry of Children & Youth Services, disagrees. “We’re seeing in Alberta that for-profit businesses are also demonstrating high quality.” Speaking of the recent government initiatives, Ducharme says, “It’s a really bright future for childcare in Alberta.”

A good part of this “bright future” involves the 14,000 new spaces. Ducharme adds that new licensing standards will permit day homes, previously capped at five children, to take in up to 10 children. There’s also new licensing for “innovative childcare,” she says. “We don’t know what that looks like yet. It’s for the communities to decide what works for them.”

Rather than speak with the “cynical minority” concerned about public dollars going toward the private profits of daycare operators, Ducharme suggested I speak with Sherrill Brown, the outgoing chair of the Alberta Childcare Network Association, an umbrella organization of childcare associations. Brown, said Ducharme, would confirm this “really bright future.” When asked if there was any difference in quality standards between for-profit and not-for-profit childcare facilities, however, Brown refused comment.

In June, the Canadian Labour Congress gave Alberta a D for its childcare programs. The CLC added: “Solutions are not evidence-based—giving capital funds to for-profit operators is a false fix. Public control of publicly funded assets is essential.”

At Public Interest Alberta, Moore-Kilgannon too is skeptical. “If the province is going to increasingly fund private, for-profit childcare, then it’s their responsibility to do the studies that prove they can provide equal-quality childcare,” he says. “And they also need to be able to say how much of the government subsidy is going into the profit margins of these companies. They should know that. But the fact is, they haven’t done any studies… showing that they’re getting quality for the public dollars they’re putting into private corporations. That means they’re not being fiscally accountable with taxpayers’ dollars.”

Jay Smith sends her 3-year-old daughter to daycare three days a week. She charms friends and family into watching her 9-month-old son while freelancing for publications across Canada.

The post Boomcare appeared first on Alberta Views.

In the next breath Cooper switches perspectives, as happens so often in conversation with the women (usually) who’ve pushed long and hard to improve learning and care for our youngest: “It’s not all doom and gloom. It isn’t.”

The care and teaching of Alberta’s youngest is at a critical juncture. Three out of four Alberta mothers with children under age 5 are in the paid workforce. The majority of families with pre-school-age children require child care of some kind. But after years of scrabbling to make do following a phase-out of provincial operating subsidies that spurred daycare staff turnover to reach 50 per cent a year, the field is celebrating two significant milestones. First, child care in Alberta is set to receive more than double the public investment thanks to a federal Liberal promise of a five-year infusion of $489-million as part of a long-awaited initiative to expand high-quality early learning and child care across the nation. Second, a new mentoring, coaching and accreditation framework aims to raise the bar in a profession whose standards have long been neglected. Yet observers such as Public Interest Alberta (PIA) fear both initiatives could run amok under a provincial government that habitually places so-called choice ahead of quality, universality and accessibility.

In the name of choice, Alberta insisted on allowing for-profit daycares to benefit from the federal money flowing into the province. “We have been very, very adamant that we want to respect Albertans’ rights and let Albertans make the choices for their children, whether it’s non-profit or for-profit care,” said Minister of Children’s Services Heather Forsyth. That insistence forced federal Minister of Social Development at the time, Ken Dryden to negotiate separate deals with each province rather than one multilateral agreement. Those who support non-profit daycare fear the resulting agreement in principle between Alberta and the federal government set the stage for a repeat of what has occurred in Australia, where public funds are being siphoned o$ by commercial chains whose first priority, by law, is not children’s care, but investor profit. What’s needed, critics say, is a fundamental shift from viewing child care as a commodity to considering it a public good.

Australian mother and social policy analyst Lynne Wannan criss-crossed Canada this fall to caution against the path Alberta seems headed down: providing dollars for daycare without the checks and balances needed to guard against predatory practices by commercial chains. Australia took the commercial path in the name of competition and choice, she told an Edmonton audience, and ironically both have diminished as a result.

Australia began enticing commercial operators to enter the market in 1991 by allowing for-profits to accept parent fee subsidies previously usable only at not-for-profits, Wannan says. The government also discontinued the strategic planning that had been directing growth to high-need areas, and dropped operational support just as Alberta did in the late nineties.

Since then, for-profit centres in Australia have risen from 15 per cent of the total to 70 per cent, equal to Alberta’s status quo. Rather than filling gaps, for-profits typically choose promising neighbourhoods already served by other centres, undercut prices until competitors are strangled, then raise fees, Wannan says. Increasingly, publicly listed chains dominate the scene as investors realize that caring for children attracts federal dollars, which can help finance real estate development. Concentration of ownership has reached the point where Australia’s competition police are barring certain chains from opening any more child-care centres in certain communities.

ABC Learning Centres operates a fifth of Australia’s daycare spaces—700-plus facilities—after gobbling up its largest competitor and growing fast. The chain claimed a $68- million profit in its most recent financial year, with more than half its revenue coming from government subsidies. A raft of directors and administrators earn salaries as high as $400,000, yet caregivers take home minimal wages, creating a revolving door of employees in a profession known to do its best work when children, families and staff build stable relationships. Even so, ABC assures investors it is intent on reducing staffing costs.

This has led to sharp criticism from some parents and workers groups. ABC Learning has sued the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union in Queensland for defamation. Commercial centres, meanwhile, face charges of breached child/staff ratios, inadequate supervision, poor hygiene and substandard programming.

The issue is a hot topic in the Australian media, with frequent reports on commercial daycare centres cutting staff and cleaning services, axing programs and slashing food costs. At the same time, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, fees have risen almost five times faster than either the increase in government assistance or the consumer price index. In upscale neighbourhoods, parents are paying as much as $100 a day.

True, the number of centres across Australia has risen markedly since 1991, but the family and community connections so important to healthy growth have declined. What’s more, supply still doesn’t meet demand, particularly in less affluent communities and for time-intensive infants and toddlers. Thus the competitive environment that might regulate quality and price in another sector isn’t working, Wannan says. “If a place is available, parents simply have to take it.”

From their position of dominance, commercial players are lobbying for reduced standards and increased subsidies. What’s more, says Wannan “Being privately owned, there’s no guarantee they will be here tomorrow. No guarantee that any of our government investment—now billions of dollars—has built a system that will last. We’re just subsidizing shareholders.

“We went down this road of commercialization in child care with all the rhetoric of competition and choice, and the absolute opposite has happened. Now it’s very hard to imagine we can escape. It’s been a big shock. None of us, I don’t think even the government, quite anticipated the result.”

Investor-driven child care chains could be headed our way. ABC Learning CEO Eddy Groves originally hails from Canada. Upon hearing from Toronto Star reporter Laurie Monsebraaten that Ottawa was poised to inject $5-billion into child care, he responded, “It sounds like a great opportunity.”

Having worked in both for-profit and not-for-profit child care centres by the time her two daughters were born, Philomena Martens knew she wanted the latter for them. Her daughters are teenagers now, but a recent job shift from another for-profit to Edmonton’s not-for-profit Primrose Place reconfirmed her choice. “Here, children are valued and people really understand that they have a big impact on them, their futures and the families they come from.” At the for- profit, Martens was forced to plant kids in front of the TV for several hours a day due to inadequate staffing and the lack of a cook. Research corroborates Martens’s experience: although exceptions exist, for-profit centres typically provide lower quality care than not-for-profits.

“The for-profit centre I was at seemed to believe that as long as the kids were happy and safe, that’s enough. And it’s not,” she says. “If licensing were to shut down centres that are just managing to keep kids happy and safe, there would be very little child care available,” says Martens. “As long as nobody’s being physically hurt and no mice and cockroaches are scurrying around, those centres will be open.”

When Lisa Nicolai scouted for daycare, she wanted something good, but needed it to be near work so she could pick up six-month-old Mekayla before closing time. She chose a site in a downtown Edmonton professional building that seemed okay on both accounts. Not until three and a half years later, when provincial authorities closed the place for infractions ranging from inadequate staffing to substandard nutrition, did Nicolai realize just what her daughter was missing. “I’d never had her in another daycare, so I thought it was fine,” she says.

How many parents can choose to stay home with their kids Realities turn the appearance of choice into a sham. Three out of four Alberta mothers with children under age 5 are in the paid workforce.

Moved to a second daycare, Mekayla enjoyed markedly better care, including more outdoor play, field trips, creative crafts and stable staffing. Both daughter and mom grew to trust the caregivers, who readily offered updates about Mekayla’s day.

The Nicolais’ experience is replicated daily, says Jane Beach, a researcher with the University of Toronto’s Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU). “A lot of parents are overwhelmed by trying to find high-quality registered child care, so they choose either what they can afford or something nearby—and that’s not real choice.”

The accreditation framework just implemented in Alberta aims to raise standards. Rather than holding all centres to an enforced level of excellence, it makes excellence a voluntary, but enticing, choice. Many child-care leaders welcome Alberta’s year-old accreditation system and are proud that it’s the first to launch in Canada. “I tell my students they’re entering the field at a really hopeful time,” says Colleen Friendship, who teaches in Grant MacEwan College’s early childhood development program. Like many, she expects accreditation to spur widespread improvement, particularly because the province earmarked some of its new federal dollars to boost the accreditation incentives.

Under a complex formula unveiled by Alberta Minister of Children’s Services Heather Forsyth last October, those enhanced incentives include program support ranging from $450 for a small pre-accredited daycare to $5,280 for a large, fully accredited centre or family day home agency; wage supplements ranging from 64 cents to $2.96 an hour per employee, depending on level of training and accreditation status; and quadrupled professional development grants of $1,000 a year per staff member. Other aspects of the minister’s five-point plan for using the new federal dollars will expand fee subsidies for parents using regulated child care services; help stay- at-home parents pay for nursery school and other learning opportunities; improve care for children with disabilities; and operate 1-866-714-KIDS, a toll-free information line about available services.

Even before the increased incentives, interest in accreditation was high. The Alberta Association for the Accreditation of Early Learning and Care Services, launched at arm’s length from the government after considerable grassroots consultation, received applications from more than half of the 550-odd eligible centres and family day home agencies before the end of its first year last October. “To have had that kind of buy-in within one year is tremendously exciting,” says executive director Sandra Beckman.

Meanwhile, the self-study, coaching and mentoring built into the accreditation framework through a second new body, the Alberta Resource Centre for Quality Enhancement, is injecting a sense of professionalism and worth into the field, says Friendship, who visits daycares as both mentor and Grant MacEwan College field placement supervisor.

That recognition of worth is long overdue, she adds, recalling colleagues who’ve left frontline care in search of not only livable wages but benefits, which are particularly scarce in for-profit centres. Friendship recalls that even as a comparatively well-paid caregiver at the Grant MacEwan model daycare centre during her two children’s preschool years, she could not afford to place them where she worked. The late-nineties phase-out of operating grants caused wages to deteriorate even more. “People began leaving the field in droves, and a huge staff shortage developed,” she says. Ideally, accreditation will help staunch the outflow of talent while giving parents a tool to use in choosing quality caregiving.

Margaret Golberg,  whose 1999 accreditaton study as a Muttart fellow prompted the early learning and child care community to favour this approach, agrees the framework provides renewed hope. Yet she remains wary about how accreditation will play out in Alberta, where investment in child care has been falling while jurisdictions such as Québec and Manitoba surge ahead. Provincial funding for regulated child care has declined in Alberta over the last decade from $67.6-million in 1995 to $53.6-million in 2003/04. Over the same period, Manitoba increased spending on child care from $45.2-million to $73-million, and Québec, increased from $203.7-million to an estimated $1.6-billion.

“It’s been a struggle in the field to maintain quality,” says Golberg. Lack of trained staff is the single biggest barrier to daycare quality, Golberg says. With average wages at little more than $8 an hour, she fears a few dollars more may not be enough to keep caregivers in the field. Nor do the incentive dollars available through accreditation substitute for lost operating funds, says U of A’s Laurie Adkin. Alberta still spends the least of all provinces on early care and learning—$104 for each child 0 to 12, or $1,118 per regulated child care space. No matter how you measure it, Alberta’s investment is the lowest in the country, and has been declining. Québec invests four times as much as Alberta on each child care space—and uses the bulk of that money to broaden access to quality care. Most of Alberta’s funds go to parents needing subsidy, and Alberta’s five-point plan for using the latest infusion of federal funds continues that trend.

Wannan, who helped shape Australia’s widely copied accreditation system, also injects a note of caution. “I thought it was a great process, but now I don’t actually have much confidence in it,” she says. A key issue is the lack of unannounced visits by validators hired to confirm a centre’s self-assessment. “We hear of services renting equipment and bringing in whatever else they need to make themselves comply.”

The same may already be happening in Alberta, says Becky Kelley, program leader in early childhood education at Bow Valley College in Calgary. Daycare staff taking her courses tell of operators who shift workers from one site to another when the accreditation team is due to arrive.

“Often, accreditation is something centres go through once, make improvements, but then slide back again,” says  the CRRU’s Beach. She adds, however, “It’s probably better than nothing. Anything that gets child-care centres to do self- evaluations and look at their programming is a good thing.

But when it’s the only thing, it may not have the results you expect. Especially when you have low wages and horrendous staff turnover.”

For many parents outside of Alberta’s major cities, it’s not a question of choosing child care, but of finding it.

Lorene Rose ran the daycare in High Prairie for over 18 years. Her community includes several reserves and Métis settlements, numerous farms and many single parents working or attending school. “We built a brand new building, but just as it was finished the government took operating allowances away,” says Rose. “We then started the struggle to keep our doors open.”

The loss of operating funds forced the centre to increase fees and markedly cut wages that at about $12 an hour had been among the highest in Alberta daycare. Unable to attract and keep qualified staff, the centre operated with “exceptions” or below-regulation staffing, an all too common scenario across the province. Facing higher fees, parents found unlicensed options for preschoolers and pulled three-quarters of their children from out-of-school care, finding other, cheaper options for care for older kids and likely leaving some kids at home untended, a choice that is neither legal nor wise.

High Prairie’s daycare closed in 2000. Rose has since responded to parent demand by opening Safe Haven Dayhomes, a cluster of homes licensed through her agency. Each can care for up to six children, including their own. “My homes are all full and I have a waiting list, especially for babies,” she says. “There’s a real need for daycare, including care at odd hours.”

As one of the communities slated to receive a Parent Link Centre, High Prairie hopes to build enough synergy to reopen at least a small daycare, Rose says. Without public start-up and operating funds, however, she predicts it will be a struggle. Meanwhile, parents who qualify for subsidies have no option but a licensed day home. The new rates double the gap between day home and daycare subsidies, she points out. “They’re penalizing parents for picking day homes. And in a situation like High Prairie, where there is no daycare, parents don’t have a choice.”

“Accreditation is probably better than nothing. But when it’s the only thing; it may not have the results you expect. Especially when you have low wages and horrendous staff turnover.” – Jane Beach

More children in Alberta are cared for in homes than in daycare centres. This includes children cared for by a relative, nanny, friend or neighbour, as well as the over 6,500 children cared for in family day homes. But there is only one training program in the province dedicated to serving day home operators: the Candora Society in northeast Edmonton.

In Alberta, day homes can be opened through one of 88 agencies or independently, says Trina Keiver, training facilitator at Candora. Providers who choose an agency will go through various security checks and must take first-aid  training within three months of opening. In addition, if their agency is enrolled in the new accreditation program, they should receive training funds.

For most home-based care, any training happens after the home opens for business or not at all, Keiver says. “Whereas in this program—and this is where there is a strong need in Alberta—they train before they start caring for children.” In addition to first aid, the Candora program covers such topics as strategies for handling abuse, working with families, making nutritious meals, helping children explore and learn, using community resources and running a small business.

“People can start providing care with no form of accreditation or training,” says Diane Sopher, a nurse who facilitates Candora children’s programs. “It’s like being a parent, but you’re learning on other people’s children.”

Day home training took root at Candora because women wanted it and it evolved to meet their needs. The grassroots approach is the only way to offer choice that meshes with people’s lives, Sopher says. She’s nervous about the government’s approach to introducing new programs, including the Parent Link Centres springing up across Alberta. “There was very limited parent involvement,” she says. “My experience in community development is that if we come in and prescribe what programs are to be offered, quite often they’re not successful.”

With 541 regulated daycares offering 26,574 spaces, plus 6,554 regulated day home spaces, the government regularly points out that Alberta has surplus capacity—5,724 extra spaces, at last count. But this number ignores the pressure points: rural care, infant care, night care, special-needs care, affordable care, quality care.

Low base funding, coupled with reliance on market forces rather than strategic planning, makes Alberta’s pressure points more acute, says PIA’s Bill Moore-Kilgannon. “We only have 9.2 per cent of children under age 5 accessing licensed child care in this province, the lowest in Canada by far. Why is that Do parents want to make other choices Or are barriers forcing them to make a choice they wouldn’t otherwise make?”

Choice. It’s oft-repeated within the provincial Ministry for Children’s Services: parents should be able to choose whether to stay home or work, whether to use informal or regulated care, whether to find a commercial or a not-for-profit operator. Yet, as voices in High Prairie and other communities remind us, barriers limit parental choice.

Consider this: How many parents can really choose to stay home with their preschoolers Economic realities, coupled with Alberta’s own policies, turn the appearance of choice into a sham, says the U of A’s Adkin. “The government’s claim to be fighting for parents’ choice to stay home is supremely ironic, given that the centerpiece of Alberta’s family policy since 1978 has been child-care subsidies available only to low-income parents who work, are searching for work, are in training for work, or who have special needs. The government has never proposed measures—for example, fiscal reforms, changes to labour legislation, employer requirements or parental insurance top-ups—to support caregivers in the home.” Nor does the fine print encourage part-time work; mothers regularly put children in daycare for more hours than necessary, simply to hold a spot.

Alberta will use some of its new Liberal federal funds to offer stay-at-home parents up to $100 a month for child care. This is similar to the election campaign promise made by the federal Conservatives that would see parents receive $100 a month for each child under 6 rather than funding daycares directly. The emerging system of Parent Link Centres also aims to support stay-at-home as well as working parents by offering one-stop education, care, support, information and referral. While potentially positive, Adkin says, those initiatives are no substitute for policies that make it feasible for parents to stay at home with their children. Those policies, she says, might include guaranteed job security for persons on extended parenting leave, livable leave payments for parents of all incomes, pension systems that avoid penalizing caregivers, reduced and flexible work hours, and removal of sales tax on infants’ and children’s essentials.

Financial barriers not only send parents to work when they would rather stay home, but limit their options for care. Without the operational grants that provided base funding in the eighties and nineties, daycare centres typically charge more than $500 a month, four times the rate in Québec. Parents seeking infant care or excellence find fees as high as $900. Lower-income parents can obtain money through Children’s Services to help pay for care in licensed centres and day homes, but those subsidies rarely cover the entire fee.

Forsyth’s five-point plan for using the new federal dollars addresses affordability concerns by deepening the pool of parent subsidies. Maximum subsidies will rise 25 per cent, to $575 a month for infants in daycare ($475 in family day homes) and $500 a month for older preschoolers in daycare ($400 in family day homes). The income threshold will also rise 25 per cent, with full subsidies available to families earning up to $39,600 and partial subsidies available for those earning up to $70,000.

Children’s Services expects the expanded subsidies to attract 6,000 additional children to licensed daycare, Adkin notes. “These measures will also—as KPMG told the government in 2002—reduce the province’s welfare budget. So the government of Alberta gets a ‘double gift’ from the federal government: money for child care subsidies and a net budget gain.”

However, Moore-Kilgannon is not optimistic. “Everyone around the table knows child-care centres are desperate and underfunded. So the increases in subsidy will most likely translate into increases in total fees, and low-income parents will still be paying the same amount.” Thus the cost of regulated care may continue to tip many families into less- expensive informal care, which varies wildly from excellent to developmentally stifling and even unsafe.

“The whole system in Alberta is rooted in child care being a commodity rather than a public service,” says Moore- Kilgannon. “The government’s approach is, ‘what can the individual family buy for their children?’ rather than ‘What can we do, as a society, to make sure all children can get a good start on life?’” The federal infusion of dollars handed Alberta an opportunity to change that, he adds; instead, we face the spectre of having both quality and choice siphoned away by child-care chains.

Choice in Government of Alberta terms still means allowing market forces to rule early learning and child care, supplemented by parental subsidies in a pinch. Or as New Democrat MLA Raj Pannu puts it, “Choice is Tory-speak for not having a plan of their own.

“The government’s approach is, “what can the individual family buy for their children?’ rather than ‘what can we do, as a society, to make sure all children get a good start on life?” – Bill Moore-Kilgannon

In defending his $5-billion effort to begin building a more comprehensive approach to child care, Liberal federal Minister of Social Development Ken Dryden pointed out to the House of Commons that Canada’s education system did not develop by putting money into the hands of parents. “It happened because the public decided that what mattered a lot was the development of their children and they wanted to put together a public response to it.”

It’s time to make a public choice, to ensure all children have access to excellent early learning and child care. After all, it’s shaping who we as a society will be tomorrow.

Cheryl Mahaffy is an Edmonton journalist working on a book about female architects, entitled Women Building Alberta.

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