Canadian Family recently published an article on the need for a national child care program. This article is a must read as it describes the many challenges that most parents face when trying to locate quality childcare for their children.

The article outlines:

• The social and economic gains that a national childcare program would create will benefit the short and long-term success of Canada.

• The lack of licensed childcare spaces across Canada and how it has made it very difficult for many parents to return to work after maternity leave.
• Waiting lists and application processes are often times not regulated. Many parents are left hanging and waiting for months and years at a time for a childcare space and or subsidies.

The article takes aim at the myth that the government has created about childcare “that childcare should be private rather than a public responsibility”

This article breaks down current spending on child care and early learning in all of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories.

To read the full article, please click here.

On Marcy 7th, 2011, in honour of International Women’s Day, The YWCA  released Educated, Employed and Equal speaking about the need to have a national child-care program in Canada. The success of the country depends on a labor force that is educated and skilled.

The number of women in the workforce has gone up every year. Women in the labor force has doubled from 1976-2009 to more than 7.7 million. “Employment for women with infants and toddlers hit 64.4 per cent in 2009, up from 27.6 per cent in 1976. That number jumped to almost 79 per cent for women with children between the ages of 6 and 15 — almost the same rate for women without children…”

60% of university graduates are women. With so many more highly educated women in the work force that have children it is a great benefit to have a national child care program.

To read the full story, please click here.

Here are helpful resources for basic child care statistics:

Ontario: Statistics and figures on child care funding, spaces, subsidies, and a recent history of child care in Ontario. Click here for Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2008, Ontario Chapter.

For the rest of this National Publication and the fact sheet 30 Quick Facts about Canadian ECEC, please click here.

Human Resources: Number and Education of Early Childhood Educators, click here for A Snapshot of the Child Care Workforce

Human Resources: Child Care Wages and a Quality Child Care System

Why Canada can’t work without good child care: How early childhood education and care supports the economy

We had a busy year including our June 2, 2008 Queen’s Park lobby, Participation in the Canadian Labour Congress Women’s Economic Equality campaign, Kingston Caravan for Child Care, www.waitingforchildcare.ca, Child Care Worker and ECE Appreciation Day, Full Day Learning, the Federal Election, publication of the Child Care Management Guide and Smart Tresurer E-Learning Tool, Equal Pay Coalition and the Stop the Cuts to Child Care Campaign – whew!

For our annual report, please click here.

ABSTRACT:
Theorizing political difference in Toronto’s postwar child care movement examines the complicated history of child care service and advocacy in Toronto between 1942-1953. It reviews how and why the State reorganized and closed down child care centres, and in so doing, how public policy and practices stigmatized child care services. The paper seeks to explain how and why different women participated in this process of reorganization, arguing that instead of seeing such women as ‘dupes’ or ‘sell-outs’, they were constrained by their institutional positions and affiliations. This story has implications for thinking about the limits and possibilities of contemporary child care organizing.

To read this article, please click here.