The Ontario “budget cookie” (below) requesting affordable daycare I found worth repeating. Daycare allows young working families to work & have a life and their children a safe & healthy environment. Without it, parents struggle with often inadequate ways of caring for their children while they earn a living.
As a guardian ad-Litem, I have seen plenty of cases where unsavory family members and other questionable practices become the only available answer to a family that cannot find daycare.
The child pays, the family suffers, and the community bears the burden of troubles that arise as the stresses and chaos build in our neighborhoods.
The return on investment of subsidized daycare is high. Allowing parents to work, children to learn and thrive in healthy environments is what gets young kids prepared to enter school and do well. The first step in becoming a healthy citizen.
Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC)
Mar 23, 2010 12:53 ET
Determined to Stop Childcare Cuts, Parents Deliver Giant “Budget Cookie” to Finance Minister
WINDSOR, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – March 23, 2010) – A dozen Windsor area daycare parents delivered a giant “budget cookie” to Ontario MPP Dwight Duncan’s office today asking the Finance Minister to “chew this over” before finalizing a budget they fear may contain up to $63.5 million in cuts. The cookie was decorated with what the parents say are “all the numbers the Minister needs” including how many centres will close and how many spaces will be lost if proposed cuts are in Ontario’s 2010 spring budget.
At stake, these parents say, is $63.5 million for 7600 subsidies that help families access affordable child care in Ontario.
The pizza sized cookie delivered today to Duncan’s Windsor constituency office was decorated in coloured icing that read: “budget cookie” all around the edge.
The centre of the cookie, also decorated with icing, read “7600 spaces” and “300 centres” indicating how many child spaces will be lost and how many centres are expected to close if Duncan allows the $63.5 million in cuts to find their way into his Thursday budget.
“This is about ensuring spaces for children,” said one of the parents, Shannon Porcellini, “and it’s about parents who rely on subsidies to work and retrain and child care centres that need funding to remain viable.”
Porcellini also cited research by economist Robert Fairholm predicting 3,480 jobs could be lost by parents who can’t go to work because of a loss of daycare spaces if the cuts proceed and a further 3,030 in job losses in the child care sector.
The loss of subsidies comes at the same time as 4 and 5 year olds are being transferred from community based child care into the school system under the province’s early learning plan this coming September.
The removal of over 35% of the children they care for will cause centres to close across the province.
The government’s own analysis estimates that in this year alone 48% of child care centres will be affected.
For background information about child care in Ontario please see www.childcareontario.org.
For more information, please contact
Shannon Porcellini
519-562-1572
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/25/AR2009032503477.html
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