Dozens of children with autism being dismissed from N.L. daycares due to staff shortages, advocates say
Cancellation of inclusion programs forcing parents to decide between leaving their jobs or the province
In January, Kristen Parsons-La Montagne's family was told their three-year-old son, William, would be losing his spot at a St. John's daycare due to a shortage of early childhood educators, leaving them with just a week to find an alternative.
Parsons-La Montagne says they were blindsided.
"We thought everything was going great," Parsons-La Montagne said from her home in Paradise, "and then one day my husband went to pick him up at the daycare and we were advised that he was being discharged due to lack of staffing and resources."
It would be a hurdle for any family: searching for a new daycare amid a child-care crisis in which spots are sparse and wait-lists stretch up to two years.
But for Parsons-La Montagne, the dismissal poses an even bigger challenge.
William has autism, and he sometimes needed help from an inclusion worker at daycare, which makes it even harder to find a daycare to accommodate him, she says.
"We were told that that inclusion worker was going to fill another spot and that they would have to look and recruit for an [early childhood educator]," Parsons-La Montagne said, who added her son previously attended the daycare without help from an inclusion worker.
Parsons-La Montagne and her husband are one of what advocates say are dozens of families in Newfoundland and Labrador now scrambling to find placements for their children with autism in the midst of a widespread daycare staffing shortage across Newfoundland and Labrador.
Parsons-La Montagne relocated her family to the Avalon Peninsula from Labrador West last summer, saying she couldn't find a daycare spot and there was a lack of services for children with autism in that region.
"The goal was to give [William] the very best outcome and quality of life and give him an early start so that he could be a child and get every opportunity to grow and love this province the way that we loved it," Parsons-La Montagne said.
Parsons-La Montagne says she's frustrated and disappointed William lost his spot because attending daycare allowed her son to flourish.
"He went from a little guy who had challenges with self-regulation, transitioning, verbal skills, even eating, to being a boy that could go to daycare … seven hours a day."
Since William stopped attending daycare at the end of January, Parsons-La Montagne said, he's regressing.
Parsons-La Montagne says they've contacted more than 100 daycares and day homes, tried to hire a nanny, and even flew in her mother for about six weeks to help care for William.
"We found some places that did not have an 18- to 24-month wait-list, but those individuals and those daycares did not accept William on the basis of his diagnosis," she said.
With all avenues exhausted, the family is facing difficult choices: either one of them has to give up their career or they'll need to leave the province they love.
Parsons-La Montagne, who is a nurse, says they visited Calgary last week. They've already found a new daycare for William there.
"We were able to find three daycares that were willing to accept William and they hadn't even met him," she said. "Everyone was shocked that it was so easy to discharge him on the basis of staffing."
Parsons-La Montagne, who says the situation is discriminatory, has contacted MHAs, the education and health ministers, the premier's office and even the province's Human Rights Commission asking for help, but hasn't found any solutions.
Daycare dismissal 'disheartening'
It's a story that's familiar to David and Janna-Lynn Pike.
The couple have two children with autism, and their youngest, four-year-old Benjamin was also dismissed from a different Paradise daycare this month.
"It's a very frustrating situation, being told that your son is being let go from daycare because he needs extra support," David said.
The couple said they called other daycares looking for space, but like Parsons-La Montagne, they're facing long wait-lists with centres not accepting neurodiverse children.
Without daycare, they're most worried about Benjamin's lack of socialization and said their son also made impressive strides while attending.
"His speech, while he was there, has grown immensely. Within the past year he's gone from like saying one word to now … connecting sentences together," David said.
Frustrated, the Pikes say the situation feels like discrimination.
"It's unacceptable," said Janna-Lynn.
"The government decided to do $10 daycare, which, we thought at the time, was great. But it just seems like it just left the whole industry in shambles," David said.
A letter sent to the Pikes by the daycare's administration said that in order to take care of the highest number of children, the daycare has to exclude children with exceptionalities.
Crisis in community, says advocate
Parsons-La Montagne and the Pikes aren't alone. Dozens of families who have children with autism are facing a similar situation, according to Leah Farrell, an advocacy worker with the Autism Society of Newfoundland and Labrador.
"It's a crisis," Farrell said. "That's a word we don't use lightly. It is definitely a crisis in our community."
Without child care, Farrell said, some families are facing desperate situations.
"It's definitely emotional. Families are, a lot of times, at their wit's end.… They're coming to us saying, 'What else can we possibly do?'" she said.
The problem stems from a legislation change the provincial government made back in 2017, which required people working in regulated child care to upgrade their education to be a Level 1 early childhood educator at minimum.
Education Minister John Haggie has refused multiple interview requests, but in an emailed statement a spokesperson for the department said workers were given five years to upgrade their education and that the government provided financial assistance, like bursaries, to cover or offset the cost of courses. The department also said it offered financial incentives upon graduation.
"The requirement to upgrade not only ensures increased quality of early learning and care each child receives in a regulated child-care centre but promotes professionalization of the sector," the spokesperson wrote.
But one early childhood educator says the rule change is a big part of the reason children with exceptionalities are being dismissed from daycare.
"We do have a severe staffing shortage at the moment," said Trista Wells, who has worked in the industry for almost 16 years.
"A lot of individuals have left the field, and also a lot of individuals who have been working are not willing to do any upgrading."
At one time, Wells said, daycares could hire retired teachers, teaching assistants or social work students to work as inclusion workers, if they had first aid training and passed background checks. But since the province changed the rules, they can't.
Wells also said parents used to be able to hire their own one-on-one support worker to attend daycare with kids who need extra help but now centres themselves have to hire the workers, who help multiple children at once.
Because of the worker shortage, Wells said, centres often have to pull the inclusion support workers to staff other parts of the daycare to ensure they meet the required ratio of workers to children.
"We have no choice but to dismiss their spaces and it's not fair to them.… It is leading to a lot of burnout and stress on everybody," she said. She fears it will push more workers out of the industry.
Wells says changing the rules to allow daycares to hire people with other qualifications, like they did in the past, would alleviate some of the pressure.
She says there's another problem, too, as $10-a-day regulated child care has created a surge in demand.
"My toddler wait list went from having 35 to now having over 190 families. I currently have a wait list of about two-and-a-half to three years long," Wells said.
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