By Chris Pickles, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Grimsby Lincoln News
January 3, 2023
The government may now have brought in the $10-a-day childcare rebate, but good options are still out of reach for families in West Lincoln.
Kat Van Kan, an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse in St. Catharines, is worried about finding the right childcare when she returns to work from maternity leave.
For her first two children, she said she lucked out by knowing a childcare provider who could accommodate her rotating 12-hour-shift schedule and her husband’s early start.
However, now that option is not available and she’s left worrying about how she will find childcare when she returns to work.
She said the two childcare services in West Lincoln are unable to accommodate her hours and she wants to see more childcare centres run by the region and more flexibility on regulations from the province.
In order to find childcare, Van Kan said she’s posting on every marketplace she can think of and has signed up to nanny-finding services, which are costing her $100 a month just to facilitate the search.
But she thinks that she will have to reduce her hours at the ICU and tag-team with her husband to meet the childcare needs of her children.
“I try to tell myself, you know, this is short term,” she said. “The kids are only young, right? You know, for this short window of a few years and then they’ll all be school-aged and that will be less difficult.
“But it poses a financial constraint in the meantime and just a sort of a psychological turmoil. And am I doing the right or wrong thing when my coworkers need me, but my family needs me? It’s a struggle.”
Melanie Felvus, who runs Smithville Christian Preschool, has recently expanded her preschool network due to demand. When the preschool moved into the Smithville station in 2019, it filled up by noon on registration day.
It expanded into Dunnville in 2021, then Vineland and Grassie in September of this year.
However, regulations from the Ontario Ministry of Education have hampered Felvus’ efforts to expand and mean she is prevented from operating more than six hours a day, she said.
That’s because the spaces she is operating in, such as the basement of Grassie Gospel Church, do not have 10 per cent window coverage, so it do not meet the requirements of the Child Care and Early Years Act.
That act regulates things like policies and procedures, building and accommodation, equipment and furnishings, playgrounds, records, staffing and group sizes, nutrition, programming, and health and medical issues in licensed childcare programs.
A statement provided by the ministry said the regulations require that children in licensed full-day child care programs are in rooms and areas where they are exposed daily to natural light. Natural light from windows, they said, supports children’s healthy development and learning by providing exposure to a variety of sights, sounds and smells.
It means that Felvus can’t extend the hours of her day care, meaning that she can’t accommodate earlier or later care, even though she wants to address the childcare shortage, which is especially prevalent before and after school, she said.
She has the staff, and now, thanks to the government’s $10-a-day program, parents can more easily afford it, but there’s just not the space.
West Lincoln Councillor William Reilly has been advocating for ways to fix the crisis and sees the solution coming from three levels of government: the township, the region and the province.
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“This will be something I continue to advocate for at our next strategic plan workshop to ensure the municipality is keeping the torch lit on this matter,” he said. “This crisis will not solve itself and it will require all levels of government working together.”