Regina parents of neurodivergent kids say there is a shortage of daycare facilities
'Parents lose daycare spots if their children have special needs,' says child care provider
A mother of a four-year-old autistic child says there's a shortage of daycare facilities for neurodivergent kids in Regina, leading to a risk of exploitation and discrimination.
Taniel Fiddler said she found a licensed subsidized $10-a-day day care spot for her son Hudson Fink and that everything "was fine until he was diagnosed" with autism.
Fiddler said the daycare owner texted her saying that for Fink to keep the spot they would need to up the fees to $600 a month and reduce the hours he could stay there. Fiddler said she was told that money was to be sent to the operator's personal bank account.
Fiddler complained to the Ministry of Education. She said the daycare later shrugged off the incident as a language barrier issue.
"The text was pretty clear to me. Send me $600 to my cash account, like to my personal e-mail. That's not a language barrier. That is full on exploitation," she said.
"Your kid has special needs. I can use this to get more money out of you. That was our first experience."
Fiddler said it's impossible to find daycares in Regina, licensed or unlicensed, that provide educational assistants (EAs). She said daycares have to apply for the EA grant money, but often the onus is put on parents.
"Even with the EA grant, daycares can hire whoever they want. They don't need to have any education behind them. It's not a really well-thought out program," he said. "It's so unorganized but so needed."
'It's a little disheartening': Fiddler
Fiddler said she pulled Fink from that daycare in September of last year and enrolled him in a preschool through the province's Early Learning Intensive Support (ELIS) Program, which supports young children who require intensive support.
"We were stuck now trying to find family members to watch him in the morning while we went to work," she said.
"If he was part of the daycare, they would have done the drop off and the pickup.… but since then we had to basically enlist grandmas, aunties, cousins, sisters, everybody to help us out, because we have to work like everybody's got to work."
She said she then found an unlicensed daycare for Fink earlier this year, but it was in the operator's basement.
"There was no space. He needs to be able to remove himself from the chaos, from other kids, from the noise, and he couldn't do that there. He was overstimulated, unregulated. It just wasn't ideal."
Fink stayed there until April, then it was back to depending on family members to provide that care, a privilege Fiddler said is not available to many families.
She said they hired a university student in the summer as a private caregiver who came to their home three times a week to look after Fink. She stayed on until last month.
Now, Fiddler has enrolled Fink at Sash Labelle Early Learning Centre, a facility in east Regina, but he can only go there for for three hours a day. It means a lot of juggling schedules, but the family is happy with the facility.
Demand has increased since $10-a-day: province
Earlier this week, Social Services Minister Gene Makowsky was in Saskatoon to announce nearly $1.3 million in capital grants to address infrastructural repairs at centres providing care for autistic individuals.
"But a lot of those places are not a daycare," Fiddler said. "We need them, but we also need daycare facilities."
In an email statement, the Ministry of Education said since 2018, it has allocated additional investments under two federal agreements to allow more children to be supported.
"The ministry continues to monitor the Child Care Inclusion and Enhanced Accessibility Grants to determine what supports may be required to ensure sustainability," the statement said.
"While there has been an increased demand on regulated child care spaces since the move to $10 a day child care, the province is supporting child care space expansion through increases to capital funding for child care facility development."
Parents unfairly losing spots: child care provider
Grace Onjaro, owner of Sash Labelle Early Learning Centre, said she was shocked when she moved to east Regina two years ago and was unable to find anywhere to take care of her children.
"Unfortunately, I had to put my career on hold so that I could take care of my child until he was able to go to school."
Onjaro said it was emotionally draining having her son sit on a long waitlist. She said she checked in other parts of Regina, Moose Jaw and nearby cities, but could not find any spots.
She said she started Sash Labelle to help fill the gap.
Sash Labelle is not a licensed daycare. Onjaro said she has been trying to get a licence for more than a year, but the process has been long and difficult.
"We want to work with the government, so that they can listen to children."
Onjaro said the centre has some parents who have told her about booking spaces at other facilities before their children were born.
"But as soon as they mentioned that their children had special needs, they lost those spots. Those are the type of parents we have right now. Parents who are like, where do I go when I booked this three years ago, and now because my child is autistic, I cannot be taken in?"
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