Concern for childcare spaces as summer looms for parents

Editor’s Note: This article has been corrected to show many schools in B.C. end next week for the summer break, and not all students are out this week as previously stated

The first day of summer isn’t something to celebrate for one Vancouver mother who feels childcare is at a crisis point in this province as parents scramble to figure out who’s going to keep an eye on their kids while they’re back in the office for the first time in more than two years.

Leah Cross has a two-year-old and a six-year-old. They’re both in care right now but it wasn’t without being on wait lists and Cross, at one point, using personal connections to swing that.

She and her husband both work and she says with school almost done for the year, many parents, like herself, aren’t sure who’s going to fill the gap. “I would likely have to get a nanny. I might have to quit my job. A nanny is not very affordable, that’s a really difficult route for a lot of families to take.”

With classes soon to be out for the summer, she’s frustrated with the lack of available options for someone to look after her kids.

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“I can’t even… I can’t emphasize this enough that summer coming up is a stressor for every family in this city because camps are very competitive and it’s very difficult to get your child into a camp, especially the camps that are more affordable that are run through the community centres. I’m in a family where both my husband and I work full-time and the challenges that camps open up at a specific day and time on the Park Board website and you have to actually register your child for a camp the moment that it opens up and if you’re a minute or two late, you don’t get a spot — you’re on the waitlist. I find it’s a climate that is a bit of a pressure cooker for families right now. It’s not just about being able to access childcare, it’s not affordable either. It’s both, it’s two-fold. I think with working parents, this is a difficult scenario.”

She adds not all parents have the options to work from home anymore. Admittedly, she explains her employer allows her to go in and leave a little early so she’s able to pick up her kids. Their childcare ends at 5 p.m. when both and her husband are done for the day. But overall, she’s really only able to work from home if their kids are sick. “It does not impact us in terms of requiring less childcare because I still need to work until 5 p.m., so does my husband. We still need to carry out those 9 a.m.-5 p.m. hours and school finishes at 3 p.m., so there’s that two-hour gap that we’re still filling.”

As Cross reflects on their situation, she says the lack of access to quality care for their children has been beyond stressful and she feels other parents can relate.

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“[It’s] been a tremendous stressor for my husband and I to the point where we’ve considered relocating for that reason alone, just to not be faced with this — to not have that uncertainty. Currently, your six-year-old is in an after-school care program that, in my opinion, is sub-par. He’s indoors a lot of the time after school, on sunny days. It’s not a great option and we don’t have any other options. We would love to live in a community where there is actually some availability where we’re not on a wait-list that we may never hear back from.”

Her son’s care is about a 20-minute drive from their home, but she says she has friends who have it much worse.

“I have friends who end up choosing childcare options closer to their work and their work might be an hour from their home because that’s the only way that they can actually pick up their child on time. If they access childcare closer to home, if they’re commuting to and from their job, then they actually won’t make it on time. Families are under a tremendous amount of pressure around childcare.”

Advocate weighs in

Sharon Gregson has been a long-time advocate for childcare in BC and she feels some progress has been made on that front, but not quite enough and not fast enough.

She says there are three areas of childcare in this province: one is for infants and toddlers, then pre-schoolers and then school-aged kids — which is typically kindergarten to Grade 7. Gregson says the summer crunch for care is real and she feels parents will find little relief over the next couple of months.

“Many parents will cope by finding recreation kind of programs, so a soccer or gymnastics camp. A lot of people will get by through, ‘I’ll look after your kids on Monday and Tuesday, and you look after mine on Thursday and Friday,’ so there’s that kind of sharing. There is much more childcare now and more licensed childcare programs are opening all the time, it’s just [BC] was so far behind that we have such a lot of catch-up to do, that’s it just not happening quickly enough for families.”

She suggests parents should call their local childcare resource and referral centre for help. She adds, they keep lists in every community across the province of all the licensed childcare that’s available.
“There isn’t any province or territory in Canada that has enough childcare to meet demand, that’s just the Canadian reality. We’re very far behind. We have about 400,000 mothers in the paid workforce and so there’s a big gap between supply and demand, which is where, unfortunately, some businesses take advantage of the desperation of parents and charge extravagantly high fees.”

Given the shortage across the board, Gregson is offering a solution, she thinks could help and parents like Cross, agree.

“School-aged childcare is very difficult. You need childcare before 9 a.m. and then you need childcare after 3 p.m. There isn’t enough of it. The solution is quite simple. Every elementary school that cares for children between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. could be caring for those same children before 9 a.m. and after 3 p.m. They are public facilities that are funded by taxpayers, they should be available for school-aged childcare in the summertime and before and after school care,” explains Gregson.

She says some school districts are starting to do it, but more are needed.

“It’s really a cultural shift that school districts have to make. The provincial government, to their credit, does have funding available for school districts that need to make some adjustments to the physical space to accommodate before-and-after-school and summer childcare. It would be really great to see school board trustees stepping up and taking advantage of the opportunity to offer school-aged care.”

The provincial government, which rolled out $10 a day childcare in 2018, says by the end of this year it hopes to expand the program and move from more than 6,500 spaces to 12,500 by the end of the year.

With files from Martin MacMahon