Sarah Hunter’s daycare, the Creativeness Tree, is struggling beneath the federal $10-a-day childcare program. (Pictures by Leah Hennel)
My mom began Riverbend Daycare in Calgary in 1987, and I began working there quickly after it opened. I used to be 18, and I shortly discovered that childcare isn’t a typical nine-to-five job: you grow to be a part of households’ lives. Through the years, I received to know their tales, shared of their hardships and celebrated their milestones. Often, my mom and I even opened our properties to host kids when their mother and father had household emergencies, and we supplied recommendation and companionship to different households.
In early 2021, my mom, who was in her 70s, stepped again from the enterprise and handed the reins to me. However since our lease was up, and the owner didn’t provide a renewal, we needed to shut Riverbend down. By then, I’d been working in daycare for 33 years, and it wasn’t only a enterprise for me. It was a lifestyle. So, regardless that many mother and father have been retaining their kids at dwelling in these early pandemic days, I invested roughly $500,000—a mix of my life financial savings, help from my mom and a few loans—to open a brand new daycare close to the place Riverbend had been. I known as it the Creativeness Tree.
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I designed the Creativeness Tree to supply play-based companies, together with a music program and an emotional agility coach, in addition to a full menu of wholesome meals for the kids. Relying on the kid’s age, my charges ranged from $575 to $1,200 monthly—which shakes out to roughly $29 to $60 a day. The day I opened my doorways in June of 2021, I used to be excited and proud, however I used to be additionally nervous. Taking good care of kids is a sobering duty and, for the primary time, that burden fell immediately on me.
I couldn’t anticipate the challenges that lay forward. In November of 2021, Alberta and the federal authorities reached a $3.8-billion settlement geared toward decreasing daycare prices for folks to a mean of $10 a day by 2026. Beneath the settlement, households would obtain expanded childcare subsidies relying on their earnings. And daycare operators have been required to decrease their charges by 50 per cent in 2022, with the plan of reaching $15 a day per baby by the 2023–2024 college yr. To make sure viability, the federal government promised to supply operators with recurring grants that may assist cowl overhead and staffing bills. Operators would obtain set quantities of funding per baby, relying on the kid’s age and the kind of care they might obtain. For instance, we’d obtain as much as $626 a month per baby for full-time care of a preschool-aged baby.
I supported making daycare extra reasonably priced, however this new system posed challenges for operators. After we lowered our charges, the province was taking 40 to 45 days to reimburse us with the promised grants. As we waited, we have been pressured to hold sizeable money owed and curiosity. At one level, I used to be commonly floating practically $100,000 of month-to-month debt for payments like lease, payroll and insurance coverage, in addition to bills for meals and gear. As an alternative of spending time with kids—which is my favorite a part of the job—I used to be holed up in my workplace for hours on finish, scrambling to steadiness the books as I waited for presidency funding to reach.
The problems didn’t cease there. Like most companies, daycare operators have struggled with skyrocketing inflation because the pandemic started. The province provides operators some extra funding to compensate for this, however it’s not practically sufficient. Final yr, my prices for issues like lease and insurance coverage shot up by 18 per cent, however I solely received funding equal to a 3 per cent improve. This yr, the province raised funding to cowl six per cent inflation, which nonetheless isn’t satisfactory. I’m left with an enormous disparity between what I’m receiving from the federal government and what it really prices to run my centre.
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Though the federal government’s promise of reasonably priced, high quality childcare for $10 a day sounds interesting, it’s not sensible. The $30 billion pledged by the federal authorities merely isn’t sufficient for the whole nation. These days, you’d be fortunate to get a doughnut and occasional for $10, however for that very same worth, daycare operators are anticipated to supply a top quality program to teach and care on your baby. What does $10-a-day childcare seem like, realistically? Sacrifices loom massive, whether or not that includes chopping meals, artwork, or music packages, or mass layoffs of educators—which suggests fewer and fewer individuals caring for increasingly more children.
I haven’t but been pressured to chop any packages, however I’m handcuffed by the constraints of the settlement, which is heartbreaking. At my mom’s daycare, we at all times prided ourselves on being inclusive, however I commonly have to show away kids with particular wants as a result of I can’t afford the extra staffing prices they require. I work 13-hour days and haven’t paid myself a wage since I opened the daycare three years in the past. It’s been exhausting and irritating. If I didn’t love the households and youngsters, I’d have shut up store way back and began one other sort of enterprise.
I couldn’t have stored the daycare going with out my household’s help. My mom is now 77, however she nonetheless helps out by coming in every single day and doing all of the cooking for the 96 kids we serve. My two grownup sons work for me full-time, serving to with issues like grocery buying and transportation for the kids. On the finish of every day, they clear the centre to save lots of on janitorial prices. A number of the kids I took care of again within the Nineties and early 2000s have even began bringing their very own kids to the Creativeness Tree. I treasure being a steady presence in these households’ lives, however I can’t maintain myself on ardour alone.
Proper now, the Creativeness Tree has a waitlist of 100 households, and lots of different Alberta daycares have prolonged waitlists too—the demand is so excessive that, beneath regular circumstances, I’d have opened a second centre. However with this settlement, nobody is opening new centres. It makes no monetary sense to put money into a enterprise that gained’t provide you with a return in your funding. The ensuing lack of provide to satisfy rising demand will inevitably make childcare much less reasonably priced, which is the exact opposite of the federal government’s aim. Ultimately, households and youngsters not directly pay the value of the $10-a-day promise—one which doesn’t imply a lot to households in the event that they’re caught on waitlists for years.
I’m a member of the Affiliation of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs, and we’re lobbying the federal government to overtake its settlement. We want a funding mannequin the place households obtain the grants immediately, in order that operators can cost applicable charges that cowl our bills. That method would promote wholesome competitors, in addition to remove administrative burdens and reimbursement wait occasions for operators. It could additionally give households the liberty to pick out childcare that matches their preferences and budgets.
Within the meantime, we’ve already seen optimistic outcomes from collective motion. In January, I participated in a collection of rolling daycare closures to place strain on the federal government. They’re lastly listening to us. As of March 1, they’ve promised to supply us with roughly 80 per cent of our grant funding at the start of every month, which suggests we not have to attend upward of six weeks for many of our reimbursements. That provides me respiratory house to pay probably the most pressing payments. However whereas this can be a step in the correct route, it doesn’t handle the broader difficulty of insufficient funding. On the very least, the subsequent factor we want is the power to extend our charges to match inflation.
I’m always harassed that my household legacy, which I’ve helped construct for over three many years, is in jeopardy. I’ve invested all my life financial savings into my centre. I’ve poured blood, sweat and tears into it. And but that won’t maintain it going lengthy sufficient for me to go all the way down to my sons. The short-term future is equally bleak for a lot of operators in comparable positions.
However this isn’t nearly daycare operators. It’s about all of us. Childcare helps form the long run—our governments’ $10-a-day promise shouldn’t be achieved at the price of a nurturing and enriching atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of kids. That’s why I implore the province to acknowledge the challenges operators are going through and work with us in the direction of a sustainable settlement. The destiny of childcare in Alberta hangs within the steadiness.
—As informed to Ali Amad
