Parents desperate for any child care
June 18, 2007
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Andrea Gordon
FAMILY ISSUES REPORTER
It's enough to make any parent shudder. And even second-guess who's looking after their own kids.
Last week, the Star reported that children at a Vaughan home daycare were seen playing close to an unfenced swimming pool and within reach of chemicals. And a few weeks earlier, Happy Child Care in Toronto was shut down after a toddler was reportedly bitten up to 18 times by another child. Police said they found 26 children in the care of three adults who did not have adequate health and safety training.
Anyone who's never been on wait lists for a child care spot, sweated over caregiving down to the last minute of parental leave, or had to fork over most of their salary to make sure their children are safe and stimulated might wonder how kids end up in these arrangements. How can parents do it?
But many parents and advocates say it's no mystery. "I know exactly how parents can do it," says Martha Friendly, a long-time child care advocate in Toronto. They're desperate, they don't know about the myriad rules and regulations, and they get no assistance with finding solutions.
"Parents are all trying to do the best they can for their children but they're not being helped," says Friendly, co-ordinator of the Childcare Research and Resource Unit in Toronto.
This sentiment is clear in a recent letter to politicians and advocates and signed by 43 Riverdale parents whose kids were at the unlicensed Happy Child, located in a local house.
"We are working hard to provide for our children but the child care burden we are facing makes it almost impossible for some of us," the letter says.
The parents, who say they were happy with the care their children received, had also been desperate. Many have had kids on multiple wait lists, including one family whose son has been on 13 lists for more than two years.
Michal Jordan-Rozwadowski, 35, is among the lucky ones who managed to get his preschooler daughter and infant son into a licensed early learning centre after Happy Child shut down. Cost: $33,000 a year. Plus it's not in the neighbourhood. And they'll have to change the arrangements in order for his kids to attend the nearby public school.
Across town near Jane St. and Wilson Ave., another mother describes the stress of leaving her 2-year-old in a home-care situation she isn't happy about so she can get to her part-time job. The mother, who didn't want to be named, is a recent immigrant from Bangladesh who also happens to work in a child care centre and whose spouse is at school. Her hours are irregular, so she relies on local home care providers. When her preferred one is at capacity, she has to leave her son, for $5 an hour, in a situation that she doesn't think is very warm or enriching.
"I know lots of people like me who don't have relatives or friends who can help. It's really tough," she says. She finds it so stressful that she's now considering taking children into her own home. "Hard is not a good enough word to describe it."
In Toronto, an estimated 9,000 children are on wait lists. "A spot in a licensed centre is a dream for most people," says Andrea Calver, of the Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare. Not to mention costly, starting at about $55 a day.
She adds it's the middle class – who don't qualify for subsidies but for whom cost is a big factor – that gets squeezed the most. And she says illegal daycares that don't meet regulations will continue to operate as long as there's a demand and parents are left to figure it out on their own.
"I didn't realize what the rules and regulations were," says Angie Clark, a self-employed graphic designer whose daughter was at Happy Child. Most parents don't, and Calver says they shouldn't be expected to. She says the answer is regulation and monitoring, which can happen effectively only in a public system that guarantees a spot for every child.
Clark says her daughter, who is developmentally delayed, was thriving at Happy Child. But when she arrived to pick her up the day it closed down, "people were looking at me like I had left my kid in a crack house, like `How could you?'"
When it comes to finding child care so she and her husband can work to support their family, Clark feels as if she's totally on her own.
"It's like the house is on fire and the government is too busy inspecting the hoses to put the fire out."
Toronto Star