Oct 21 UPDATE: Waterloo Region Council voted 14 to 1 to keep the child care centres open! Congratulations!
The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC) is supporting local parents who are calling on the Region of Waterloo to reject a recommendation from consulting firm KPMG to close five regional child care centres. The centres currently provide 250 quality spaces for local families and employ 50 ECEs and child care workers. The OCBCC also calls on the province to address the issue of child care closures across Ontario.
OCBCC Public Policy Coordinator Carolyn Ferns, along with Childcare Resource and Research Unit Executive Director Martha Friendly and Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada Coordinator Lyndsay Macdonald, will attend tonight’s public consultation on the KPMG recommendations as well as a parent-organized rally beforehand.
“The Region of Waterloo is a leader in high quality early childhood education and care, and these Regional Children’s Centres are part of that. These are sites of innovation, and they provide vital public services to hundreds of families. It would be absolutely the wrong direction to close or privatize these centres.” said Carolyn Ferns, OCBCC’s Public Policy Coordinator.
Ontario’s central advocacy group for a quality child care system, the OCBCC is comprised of hundreds of non-profit child care centres, as well as parents, grandparents, ECEs, trade unionists and concerned citizens.
“Non-profit centres understand that an injury to one is an injury to all. We don’t build up our child care system by closing down public centres that have served the community for over 30 years.” said OCBCC president Sheila Olan-Maclean, herself a non-profit child care director in Peterborough.
The OCBCC is also calling on the provincial government to develop a real plan for child care in Ontario and to address the issue of municipal child care closures.
“The province is sitting on its hands while high quality child care centres close down. We need a real child care policy in this province and a real plan to build child care up, not tear it down.” said Ferns.
Contact:
Carolyn Ferns
Public Policy Coordinator
Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care
416-538-0628 (office)
647-218-1275 (cell)