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A special council meeting in March planned priorities for the next year for the OCBCC.

For many years, the OCBCC has had various grants and projects. Today, we have diversified funding through membership, sales of publications and donations.

Some years, we have had three staff, our current budget has capacity for two staff. We were sad to lose long time staff Sue Parker, who took a job with the AECEO. Jenny Robinson left for another position.

Andrea Calver remains in a new position of Coordinator and we will be hiring a “Campaigns and Administration Assistant” soon.

We’ve agreed to focus our work in the following key areas:

• Continue our critical work monitoring the Provincial and Federal Budgets.

• Participate in pre-budget activities and reaction to the budget, especially this year given the lack of funding to child care and child care cuts.

• Engage our members, our allies and front line staff in advocacy.

• Maintain our critical relationships with other groups in Ontario and across the Country.

• Focus on our www.waitingforchildcare.ca campaign to raise the profile of early learning and child care among MPP’s and at Queen’s Park.

• Monitor on-going provincial issues, like the report on full-day learning.

• Expand our media presence to more community and ethnic media.

• Continue to provide information on best practices through the Child Care Management Guide and our new “Smart Treasurer E-Learning Tool”

 This work represents critical advocacy for early learning and child care programs.

Over the next year we will look at our Governance Structure as we have a very large Executive and Council. We need to get more people involved – as community contacts, reporting to supervisor network meetings and through women’s committees.