Sask. child-care centre calls for greater collaboration with province

A Saskatchewan child-care provider says the province should listen closely to experts if it wants to deliver on affordable child-care.

Kelly Swayze, director of Carnduff Community Daycare, said it felt like directors across the province have been ignored by the provincial government in the rollout of the $10-a-day child-care program.

“Decisions the ministry is making without the input and statistics from the boots-on-the ground educators are leading to logistical and financial blind spots,” Swayze said in an open letter.

She added that veteran directors are feeling discouraged and disrespected.

“Veteran directors have decades of experience, yet the ministry has been treating us like their administrative clerks rather than their partners in the field,” Swayze wrote.

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The Carnduff Community Daycare director went on to call for the creation of a veteran directors advisory committee to meet quarterly with the Ministry of Education.

During question period, Education Minister Everett Hindley said the province does have an existing implementation committee shared with the federal government and a “broad swath” of Saskatchewan child-care operators.

Hindley said the province will be implementing a series of changes starting July 1 as a result of consultations with parents and operators across the province.

They include slowing down the construction of new spaces in order to support existing spaces, and the creation of a 10-hour standard day of child care.

“Those are a couple of examples of things that were brought to us as government, and we took those concerns seriously,” he told reporters.

The minister said the province is at 92 per cent of its goal of creating 28,000 new child-care spaces since the first $10-a-day child-care deal was announced in 2021, saying any future expansion would be “very targeted.”

Hindley also said the province has increased wages for early childhood educators by 43 per cent at various levels.

Swayze’s letter said veteran child-care directors can provide specific details to the ministry to address things like infrastructure hurdles to staffing shortages.

“We have the data, we have the experience, and most importantly, we have the heart,” she wrote.

“We are not looking for less work; we are asking for a seat at the table that our expertise has earned.”

Hindley said the province has provided additional training for those entering the sector for this specific reason.

NDP MLA Joan Pratchler said many centres like Carnduff have been in crisis already, but aren’t being given an equitable funding formula.

“They’ve been experts for all these years. They love their job, they care about the children, they care about their work, they care about their communities and it’s the same thing in rural and urban [communities],” she told reporters.

“We need affordable, accessible childcare. It’s a system. To build a system, you have to think ahead, you have to plan ahead and you really have to engage the people you’re working with to find the best results.”