A newly released Sunshine Coast Child Care Action Plan says a lack of accessible, affordable child care impacts “the economic development of the region, the health and well-being of families, and the long-term success of children.”
The action plan, drafted under the lead of the District of Sechelt and with some $67,000 in provincial funding, included a survey completed by 440 parents and guardians that found 84 per cent of them couldn’t find child care when needed.
The Town of Gibsons, the Sunshine Coast Regional District, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and School District No. 46 (SD46) were also involved in drafting the plan.
The plan’s authors also sent surveys to 29 local child care providers. Eighteen responded and identified “inability to hire and retain trained staff” as their top concern.
Other community stakeholders interviewed for the Child Care Action Plan commented on the complex set of issues affecting child care availability and affordability on the Coast, including staffing.
“The Sunshine Coast is experiencing a severe lack of child care, where less than one in five families is able to secure licensed, regulated, child care,” the plan’s authors note, adding that the ratio drops to one in nine for families seeking care for children 0-3 years old and one in 11 for families looking to get before or after school care for children 6-12 years old.
The findings on affordability were that a typical two-parent family has to spend 68 per cent of its monthly after-tax income on housing and child care. It’s 64 per cent for an average lone parent family.
“Some of the under-served families also identified transportation as a key concern. With so few child care spaces available, and especially in the more rural communities, families needed to find a way to travel to and from services. The lack of transportation options also added to their stresses related to child care,” said the District of Sechelt in a release accompanying the Action Plan.
Marina Stjepovic, who coordinated the project on behalf of Sechelt, said, “with this plan, we really wanted to hear from people on the ground, what’s working for them and what’s not. We’d already heard that finding adequate child care can be very difficult for young families on the Coast, and now we have some recommendations to consider to improve the situation.”
Those recommendations include the creation of a Joint Child Care Council, to include the local governments, VCH, SD46, Capilano Unversity and Sunshine Coast Community Services. The council would “act as the oversight body for child care in the region generally” and would also be involved in “monitoring and coordinating” the response to the action plan’s recommendations.
The other recommendations are:
• To set a target of creating 180 additional licensed child care spaces for children 3-5 in the next 10 years, 380 additional spaces for children up to three years old, and 900 before and after school spaces.
• Advocate for a universal child care system.
• Develop initiatives to attract and maintain early childhood education workers.
• Create a streamlined process for child care throughout the province. The report notes that while “child care is primarily the domain of the provincial government … there are important steps that local governments and their partners can take to support child care services in their communities.”
Powell River Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons called the action plan a “high bar to set” but added he thinks the government is capable of achieving it.
“The work that we asked communities to do is a result of our desire to increase the affordability and accessibility of child care,” said Simons. “This is one of the goals of our government and I think we’ve been pretty successful so far in taking good steps in that direction.”
Simons said the NDP government has so far invested about $5 million in child care initiatives in the riding and the Feb. 18 budget announced a new BC Child Opportunity Benefit.
The program will launch in October and will provide 290,000 families with more support. According to the government, when combined with B.C.’s Affordable Child Care Benefit and the Fee Reduction Initiative for licensed child care spaces, families with one child may save up to $20,000 and families with two children could save up to $28,000 each year.
The consultant who prepared the plan was scheduled to discuss the findings at the Feb.19 Sechelt council meeting, after Coast Reporter’s print deadline.
