Navigating the necessary evil of child care in Canada

It's a common complaint among working parents -- getting good quality childcare that doesn’t break the bank can be tough.

That warning from friends got Halifax-area mom Shannon Miedema mobilized to start looking around for childcare spaces early into her pregnancy with her first child Logan, now 5.

"If you want to have options, that's when you have to do it ... which is bizarre. I didn't know it was that bad," says Miedema, who has seen desperate parents sending out last-minute notices on Facebook because they're heading back to work but still don't have a spot for their child. She's been more fortunate: both of her children have attended a home-based childcare the whole family is happy with.

Politicians have come up with their own fixes to the childcare dilemma. During the federal election, the NDP promised to set up a national childcare program that they say would create one million childcare spaces costing no more than $15 a day.

In Ontario, the governing Liberals introduced an all-day kindergarten program for four- and five-year-olds in 2010 which was partly touted to save parents money on daycare fees too.

But even the fixes have been found to have flaws.

Teachers working in Ontario's full-day kindergartens have complained too many classrooms have well beyond 26 students, the targeted average. Even with two educators supervising, the large classes have become unsafe madhouses, teachers say.

The NDP's national childcare proposal meanwhile was modelled on Quebec's publicly-funded program, first introduced in 1997.

While research has found that program has seen more women heading back to work, it has also found higher rates of behavioural problems among children eligible for the program, with little positive effect on their academic performance.

The most recent, a working paper published by three economists in September, also found that children exposed to the program had higher rates of aggression, anxiety and hyperactivity that did not fade away as they grew to school-age. The researchers also found higher rates of criminal behaviour and lower reported rates of health and overall satisfaction among the group of teens who would have been among the first eligible to participate in the program after it was opened to all children from infancy up in 2000.
That study has been criticized by some who claim flaws in the economists’ methodology.

Nevertheless, even those who would like to see more affordable, accessible childcare have acknowledged more work is needed to develop a high quality system.

Quebec expanded its system quickly yet was still unable to meet demand once the program had launched, says Kerry McCuaig, fellow in early childhood policy at Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education's Atkinson Centre. As well, the program was balanced on 40 per cent of care provided through home-based daycares run by people with limited training, instead of larger, better-staffed and resourced ones in the community.

Even now, she says, Quebec has worked to meet demand by allowing commercial providers to provide about 35 per cent of the spots, although the best outcomes are among children in not-profit, community-based centres.

“Overall, Quebec kids aren’t doing badly,” says McCuaig, pointing to international scholastic assessments in which Quebec students score well. “But given what Quebec is spending, you could say that they’re not getting all the value that they could for their investment.”

To be successful, a childcare program should have strong infrastructure behind it, she says, with well-trained caregivers and teachers. Expansion needs to be done carefully, in tandem with quality resources to support it. As for complaints of overcrowded classrooms in Ontario's case, the numbers aren't out of line with international averages of one educator to 18 children; what's important is that staff are specifically trained to work with the younger age group.

“I have been in classrooms with 32 kids where it was fine and I’ve been in classes with 25 kids and it was not so fine,” McCuaig says.

Her prescription is similar to what a coalition of childcare advocates in British Columbia says it's aiming for through a planned $10-per-day scheme there. It would see a gradual 10-year rollout of the program. Early childhood educators would be required to have better training, be better paid and the plan would allow for a range of options in curriculum, such as Montessori or other approaches to pre-school education.

"By virtue of not being a leader on this issue in British Columbia we have the advantage of being able to learn from other provinces," says Sharon Gregson, spokesperson for the Coalition of Childcare Advocates of British Columbia.

"We know we will never have a high quality system of early care and learning without having well-qualified, well-compensated, well-respected early childhood educators in place."

Andrea Mrozek, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada agrees that childcare quality comes down to the quality of the caregiver, but does not believe that is determined by formal credentialing.

She fears that mass, universal programs may make it harder to deliver the best quality care to disadvantaged children -- who research suggests may benefit from it most -- while crowding out other good programs that fall outside the system.

"Small children don't need fancy education programs. They need to be loved and develop a strong relationship with a caregiver who loves them," she says. "My advice is to be looking at the nature of the caregiver and not necessarily to be looking for the highest-educated person but rather the person who most mirrors your home environment, who most mirrors your values."

In his own research, economist Michael Kottelenberg from Huron University College at London, Ont.'s Western University has found the most negative effects in Quebec have been concentrated among those children who would otherwise have not been in childcare, if it weren't for the program. Children who started in infancy also did not do as well, including getting sick more often.

However, his further investigation has shown significant benefit for children from single-parent, disadvantaged families, while children from two-parent families who started out in the low- to mid-range of cognitive ability experienced more negative effects,  associated with less one-on-one time spent with their parents.

As a dad with a child of his own in daycare, Kottelenberg says working parents who need care shouldn't panic about the results, but use them to remind themselves there is a lot they can contribute to their child's development when they're at home.

"If you're worried about your child's cognitive development, the best thing to do is to spend additional time reading with them," says Kottelenberg. "I don't have quantity of time but I can have quality of time with my child."