Would-be child-care providers say N.L. needs to remove roadblocks
Education minister says department aims to streamline process
With child care in high demand, two women looking to create more spaces in their rural Newfoundland communities say they're running into too many hurdles.
Natalia Crocker, the mayor Trout River on Newfoundland's southwest coast, has been working for two years to get child care in the community.
She said the need has grown tremendously over the years, adding she knows of people who can't work because they don't have access to child care.
"Every place that I worked, people were trying to work there but they were having issues finding child care. Myself included," Crocker told CBC News in a recent interview.
Crocker's work to create a child-care centre included a business plan that scouted out two town buildings, she said, but the process got caught up in red tape and didn't come to fruition.
"You work so hard to try and get something to happen, and then you have just, you know, parents, young parents that are disappointed. It's the disappointment in them more so than anything else that's bothersome," she said.
"I'm not sure what the solution is there, but maybe if there was somebody who could take a look at what happened in our situation and then say, 'OK, for next time, how can we do this differently? Or how we can help? Or how can we get ahead of this to make sure that this isn't the situation if we try to do this again?'"
Rhonda Sheppard, an early childhood educator and chief of the St. George's Mi'kmaw band, is trying to restart her daycare centre. She had operated a day home that could care for six children and had 18 more families on a waitlist, but it was lost in a fire.
"A lot of the holdups is to do with all the regulations, even though, you know, we all need regulations to provide safe and healthy spots for our children to go to," she said.
Sheppard said she also ran into hurdles for financial support. The province does offer grants to centres looking to start or expand care, but Sheppard said delays in things like zoning and other assessments meant they couldn't access funds in time.
"If there was money there that was able to be provided for such a big need facility in our area, especially our rural areas … where's it gone? Where's that money gone?" she asked.
"If you don't have any registered spots, parents ain't going to be able to avail of $10-a-day child care."
N.L. looking for ways to speed things up, says minister
More than 9,500 children are registered in $10-a-day spaces in the province, according to Education Minister Krista Lynn Howell. About 2,000 more are in various forms of development, she added, and she hopes to see those spaces become available in the fall.
Howell said she's well aware of the need and would like to see things move faster.
"I believe the average number is [that] a child is on about 12 waitlists, so we see the demand that's actually presenting itself here in Newfoundland and Labrador," Howell said.
"I've said it from Day 1 when I showed up in government, I think of one of the biggest bones of contention that I have is how long some of this stuff takes. So nothing is really moving fast enough for me, but that's, you know, something that we're working on."
Regarding Sheppard being unable to access government money because of delays in the process, Howell said tight deadlines have to be set to ensure the $10-a-day spaces can open on time.
"What we had allocated for that round of investment, the uptake was incredible. We had a significant number of centres who were interested in expanding or opening spaces," she said.
"But if there is somebody out there who's still interested in that type of work, then please by all means reach out to us."
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With files from Bernice Hillier and The Signal
