By Michelle Poirier [1]
BELLEVILLE – Although subsidies are available for families in need of help affording child care, the middle class is struggling to pay for it, a local daycare provider says.
Debbie Milne, the executive director at First Adventure Child Development Centre [2] on Bridge Street East, said there are many subsidies available for low-income families. And in Belleville, unlike in bigger cities, there are no wait lists for that help.
But the families that don’t qualify for subsidies are struggling, Milne said.
“We still have high fees, certainly for families who are in a situation where they can afford to pay; sometimes they’re paying extreme amounts in child-care fees. But those that are able to qualify for subsidies are able to (pay). So who really gets lost in it often is the middle class, where they don’t qualify for subsidy but they don’t make enough money to be able to juggle child care. So those are the ones that do have the biggest challenge,” she said.
Michelle Grimes of Belleville is a mother of three kids in daycare. The Loyalist College professor said she spends approximately $2,000 a month on child care.
“I can tell you that from my experience daycare costs are financially crippling most families I know. My husband and I are professionals. We make pretty good salaries for the area. But we pay almost twice as much in daycare expenses than we pay for our mortgage. So it’s quite a hefty amount of money every single month going out to child care,” Grimes said. “For quality child care you’ve got to pay for it, and you’re right: there’s no subsidies available for us. But meanwhile it’s eating up probably about a third of our budget at least every single month.”
Milne is also the representative in the community for the Coalition for Better Child Care of Ontario [3], which is lobbying for a provincial child-care program in which a set cost would be paid by parents and the province would pay the rest.
“This is something that we have been lobbying for for years. Sometimes we have a provincial government that is more inclined to look at it and try and address it,” she said. “So it’s something that we continue to work towards.”
Although such a program would be very expensive for the government, Milne said she believes it is worth it.
“When you look at the fundamentals of what investing in (a child’s) early years is, you recognize that it is probably one of the wisest investments that our governments can make. Eighty per cent of the learning happens in the early years. So that’s the foundation for the future of these kids and families,” she said.
Grimes agrees that the government should help with the cost of child care.
“I think that there’s still this stereotype that mothers are staying at home with their children who are young and the fathers go out and work and come home. But I mean, those days are over. Seventy per cent of families have two working parents, and I think that daycare is just a reality for most people,” she said. “I think it’s so short-sighted that we don’t see the long-term benefits of really good-quality child care. And by funding it provincially there would be some oversight and accountability there, which right now, other than licensed daycares, is not really that stringent. So I’d like to see it happen, yeah, definitely.”