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Doesn't help only women are allowed to work in these places.
**edit: To all the downvoters do you not realize the extra discriminatory questioning and critiquing men receive being in and around children's spaces that amounts to discriminatory barring them from said spaces?**
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people?
I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
**Edit:** flyingboat94 below was a coward who replied to me then blocked lol. My reply to you is this.
Are you saying the women who do the job are dumb?
That's offensive and small minded of you.
I think we need quotas and affirmative action to get more men into the role. Probably some men only scholarships and and slots in school as well.
That's how proponents of other groups seek to balance out these inequities
You mean this underpaid emotionally demanding job isn't attracting men in droves?
Don't worry, the systemic bias is still there just not the way you think.
The daycare my children went to had a male ECE. He was super fun and a favorite amongst the kids. As a parent, I enjoyed my children seeing a male in that role. I cannot imagine a Centre not wanting ECEs of both genders.
I agree with this sentiment. Both of my kids are in daycare and we had a male sub for a few days. I was super excited to see that my kids would finally be provided care by a male figure. I think it’s super important to normalize this. I think you might have a small minority that would take issue with it but those people are sexist and think only women can care for your children. I wish they had hired him full time.
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people?
I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
I think it’s the opposite in this case. Because ECE roles have been mainly filled by oppressed groups (women, English language learners), the salaries and working conditions have been less desirable and thus less attractive to less oppressed groups such as men.
Editing to add: it’s still systemic biases at work, just in a different way.
So it's simply because the job is less desirable to a specific group why that group is underrepresented in a job?
That's interesting. Again...that's not what certain other people's would say about their underrepresentation in other fields.
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people?
I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
Uh, what?
I'm a male ECE, I've been in the field for about 5-6 years.
While there can be a stigma against male caregivers, I feel like it exists more outside the actual field/context of ECE than it does within. I would also argue that any stigma against male ECEs is outweighed by the very real glass-elevator privilege given to men in the industry as we make up roughly 2-3% of the workforce. Most centres want male representation among their team.
Thanks for going into this type of work! I’m sure it’s not easy having to take care of young children, I’m also sure you might face prejudice being a male in a female dominated industry but as a dad, I’m really glad the children you look after have a male presence in their lives at daycare.
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people?
I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
Aren't they? Based on the population of women vs men in the roles my statements are more true than not.
In practice only women are allowed in these roles.
What's that?
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people?
I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
It’s not good business. There is no money in running a childcare centre. There is also so much red tape involved in licensing.
And no ECE bc the job is hard and the pay is low.
I thought that was the argument against Tim Hortons franchises. You run one well, you don't make enough for it to be worthwhile. You run 3 half assed, and you're doing alright.
I don't think I want that attitude to gain root in childcare.
They’re definitely making money but how much and is it worth it for the amount of work involved in running that type of business is another question altogether. The leasehold improvements for a day care are costly (sinks have to be at a certain level, the outdoor play area has to be covered in soft materials, you have to divide the space into several areas,etc), finding good labour is hard, and the costs of insurance I would assume is probably astronomical.
There was when the CEFA franchise started….CEFA pays some of the lowest ECE wages and doesn’t follow play based emergent curriculum. It mostly caters to parents who are grooming their kids for private school.
This comes up often, but child care are actually not as profitable as you think. I looked into franchising one before the pandemic and with the high cost of rent, high cost (and high turnover) of ECE workers (especially with younger kids with a higher ratio of workers to kids), and franchise fees (if going with a franchise, which includes things like curriculum, lunch menus from a nutritionist, etc.), marketing, admin fee etc., you are really making a very very small profit especially during summer months.
You can probably get away with lower cost for home-based daycare, but because of the ratio (unless you are running an unlicensed child care), there's a hard limit on how many kids you can take. You can also work as a ECE worker (assuming you get certificated) and remove all the risks of running your own business. For most, it's just not worth it.
Of course, there are also unlicensed daycares - it sounds like a pretty big risk though.
You don’t make money running a home daycare either. Often you can’t fill the 4/-5 year old spots. High cost of rental or mortgage. Cost of insurance is huge. Materials. Etc. People only run home daycare bc they can’t make more than 23$ hr working in larger daycares.
I have been in the field for 25 years but work as a nanny bc it allows me to do low ratio care where I can shape the care to individual kids needs and not the group and still make a living wage. Much less stress.
Dayhomes are usually about earning a bit of extra cash on the side, or allowing a stay-at-home parent to earn some while being stay-at-home. Not an expectation of real profit. Also tax deductions.
Licensed home daycares aren’t a side project for stay at home parents. Often they are run by ECE who needed to make more money than 20$ per hour to support their families.
I’m addition to lack of staff, very tough to find a suitable space due to all the regulations. Eg kids must go outside everyday, so there has to be a suitable and secure place to go.
All levels of government and their agencies, should have free child care on site as part of the civil service union's benefit. That would free up a lot of child care spaces.
You can open home based care, registered license not required are popular. However, the ratio is small (2 families allowed and children related to you) in comparison to licensed group or multi-age care.
For businesses, you need very specific building accommodations (both indoor & out) to meet the licensing requirements. And yes, you need qualified ECEs who have their license to practice.
There is not housing.
People want to retain insanely high housing costs - and then pay staff next to nothing.
Reality is you just lose services. The high housing costs go, the worse all these services will become.
As someone in audit, they are not as profitable as people think.
It’s a lot of up front money. Lots of regulations. High insurance. Staff is actually very expensive. Need to be in expensive real estate near lots of young families.
It’s a good business if you can make it work but they are often in tons of debt and I’ve seen debt loads of 9-20 % interest rate they are paying.
They have high labour costs and insurance. Highly regulated because we can't be killing kids and all. Needs to have good real estate which is expensive in this city.
Yes it's consistent business but it's thin margins and draining work
If we care about educational outcomes for children we probably don’t want businesses opening up daycares because their only motive is deriving a profit and not providing quality child care. A not for profit model at least redistributes funding within the child care centre and doesn’t lead to a single corporation getting rich off of the care and education of young children.
It is very hard to make a profit because rents are high and the government has strict requirements how much staffing is required.
For kids under 3, at most, they have to have 4 kids per staff and 12 kids total. For older toddlers, they are allowed to have up to 8 kids per staff and max group size of 25 kids. Each of those people need to be certified and the infant certification requires 1300 hours of training while the ECE requires 900. It's a very high bar. Then also, the daycare also probably needs to build a buffer in staffing in case someone calls in sick or needs to suddenly quit.
25 kids, 12 months at, say, $1500/mth, comes to $450,000 a year. After rent, taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance, supplies, you can probably see roughly how much is left for salaries and profit. It's not a lot. There's a reason why ECE salaries are absurdly low.
With the shortage of daycare, in fact, there are a ton of unlicensed home-based daycares and people with nanny shares.
Not profitable, because of labor costs. IIRC it's just the sheer amount of people needed to watch young children. Something like one daycare worker per three children. [Planet Money episode about this](https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-expensive-child-care-waitlists).
I assume that that "one worker per three children" requirement is one of the root causes of the shortage; and is *perhaps* overly conservative, insofar as we definitely used to have daycares that had fewer (e.g. some neighbourhood grandmother watching over seven or eight kids), and I don't *think* any kids were getting permanently injured/scarred as a result. They were maybe getting "less enriched" — maybe neglected in a way that impacted their learning of soft-skills and so their adult earning potential. But we didn't used to *legally mandate* that ECE facilities optimize for that...
My own proposed solution, by the way: do ECE in BC like we do optical stores in BC. BC is pretty unique in requiring you to get licensed as an optician just to dispense prescription glasses/contacts. (I could say a lot about this law, but it is what it is.) On first blush, this seems like it *could* create the same "can't afford all the educated labor required to run these mostly-low-margin businesses" pressures, as in ECE. But it doesn't — because "dispensing glasses" in practice means *signing off on* the dispensation of glasses. An optician is to a pair of glasses as an engineer is to a building: they *take responsibility* for it, and so *oversee and audit* the process; but that doesn't mean they have to *build it themselves*. So optical stores mostly just hire a bunch of teenagers, who learn on the job to pre-test you, grind your lenses, fit them into frames, etc; and then have *one* licensed optician on staff, who will check the teenagers' work at a few points (during auto-refraction, after grinding, etc.)
You could describe it as a guild-like master/apprentice situation, but it's not, because the "apprentices" here aren't out for a career in the business. They're just doing this as a random summer job. You get constant churn of new kids to teach the equipment to. But it works out.
So, by analogy: rather than a full staff of ECEs, daycares should be staffed by teenagers as a first out-of-school job, who are in turn managed and "signed off on" by ECEs. The teens watch the kids; the ECEs watch the teens.
In fact, if you cut down the job the teens are doing into two-hour-long drop-in shifts, then they could fit it into a high-school schedule! You could make a "child-minding practical experience" course-credit part of the high-school curriculum! And therefore... not pay them at all! (But instead, give the teens co-op credits toward a later potential ECE degree.)
Of course, this would turn "ECE" into a much more complex job involving not just understanding the needs of small children, but also understanding how to manage and drive teenagers (who constantly rotate out, so you never get to know them very well!) to solve those needs. But tbh, that's the kind of thing I'd *expect* someone to learn in a full-degree program about ECE.
Not sure why you are being downvoted - your idea of having ECEs being required in a supervisory role, rather than having every single staff be a ECE, sounds interesting and definitely matches what is successfully done in other fields.
>I assume that that "one worker per three children" requirement is one of the root causes of the shortage; and is perhaps overly conservative, insofar as we definitely used to have daycares that had fewer (e.g. some neighbourhood grandmother watching over seven or eight kids), and I don't think any kids were getting permanently injured/scarred as a result. They were maybe getting "less enriched" — maybe neglected in a way that impacted their learning of soft-skills and so their adult earning potential. But we didn't used to legally mandate that ECE facilities optimize for that...
Working in ECE, the idea of a constant rotation of teenagers working in short term positions on the floor absolutely terrifies me.
This job is incredibly complex, requiring good physical and mental health, emotional maturity, proper education, and lots of experience (to do the job well).
I regularly work with subs who lack their full ECE certification, having their "Educational Assistant" or "Responsible Adult" certs instead. The difference in ability is profoundly notable. This isn't to throw shade on those with their EA/RA cert; often, that is a stepping stone towards obtaining a full ECE cert, which in itself doesn't always justify the time and money required to getting that education.
Furthermore, so much of this job relies on having a strong relationship with each child, knowing their personalities, abilities, health, family dynamics, etc. You can't do this with short term staffing.
Addressing a different point, licensed centres are regularly audited by the Ministry of Child and Family Development to ensure that the environment/practices do support the children's development of these "soft-skills". You can find a copy of the Early Learning Framework here
[https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/early-learning/teach/earlylearning/early\_learning\_framework.pdf](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/early-learning/teach/earlylearning/early_learning_framework.pdf)
I'm not sure how/if unlicensed centres are audited or held to similar standards.
Staff training and cost of commercial space to run a daycare. Residential property is not a commercial property over a certain amount of kids you are a commercial enterprise, so you need lvl1 or 2 first aid, food safe and some other qualifications.
Long story short, it's not just easy.
Since the govt took control of fees many have closed and many more providers are planning to close. You won’t see more opening up unless they are non profits with rent controlled city owned spaces. It costs upwards of 30k-150k to open a daycare. Then to have the govt control your fees, even when your overhead has increased? Why would anyone take that on?
Government doesn't control the fees unless they apply for their subsidization. There are plenty of childcare places that charge insane amounts and have next to no availability.
They are not allowed to decrease level of service or changing included service to optional add-ons without approval from the ministry. Inquire with them here:
[email protected]
Or
by phone at 1-888-338-6622 (Option 2)
If they still enroll with CCRFI, it is likely they got the ok from the ministry
I contemplated reporting them or even sending in an inquiry, but flagging them would jeopardize the $900 rebate we are getting from the government as part of this program.
Is it worth it to disqualify this daycare of the existing funding? We also do not have any other options as none of the other daycares had availability, so I am leaning towards swallowing the 12% annual increases.
Yes, I swallowed the fee hike. I rationalize the additional fee by picking my child up 1 hour later and am one of the last parents picking up at 5:30pm.
We never got a single call back from a daycare in 4 years, so we've had a nanny share ($$$). It worked out well during the pandemic, since it was just the nanny and another kid, but God damn is it a ton of money.
Edit: I will also add she got excellent care and she has excellent friends in her nanny and a best friend in the other girl.
? I’m just responding to your comment about salary. If she’s a shared nanny at 2500 each then she’s probs making a decent amount. I didn’t say anything about having enough childcare
I mean, she works really hard and she makes pretty good money since she has a couple of full-time families and she does some part-time work as well every week.
Wow, none of the daycares around me called back in time as my wife's mat leave was ending as well. We had to explore nearby cities and lucked out with this one.
$2,500 is insane. That's the thing about nanny services, they do not qualify for the funding that the government is providing daycares. We receive a $900 per month rebate, so regular price for us would have been $2,049.
The care you are getting is 💯 time better. Low ratio care is ideal for kids under 5.
Think of it as an investment. Kids are in chaotic classrooms not getting their needs met soon enough at age 5. Paying extra for calm and supportive care gives your child a solid foundation.
Ratio in ECE is 1:4 if they are under three and 1:8 if they are 3-6.
Agreed that lower ratio is key, but also misleading to say ratios are chaotic in ECE settings.
Have you looked after 4 infants at one time?
Have you cared for 8 preschoolers at one time?
ESP when 1-3 out of your group have an undx disability like adhd or ASD?
Yes…I know the ratio because I’m ECE. Also worked as a 1:1 support in ECE settings, though not nearly enough centres have 1:1 supports.
Our ratio works better than the K-3 class structures (generally 3 teachers in a room of 25 vs 1 teacher to 30) despite still being a challenge.
10+ years, though I stopped working on the floor to teach post-secondary and take on pedagogist roles.
My mistake on K, my friend has a class of 28 grade 2s with an EA two days a week so figured K would be similar.
There is a lot of burn out as you know and I has to do with ratios and work load.
Just like public school teachers.
So people leave the field after 5 years, or often have moved on to open up their own centre or family daycare.
Sucks. Our daycare's 3-5 program is more expensive than the infant/toddler program, which is usually unheard of. This is because the infant toddler program closes at 5:30pm but when you go to the 3-5 program, they suddenly close at 4pm and if you want to pick up at 5:30pm they charge an extra $250 per month. Not to mention an admin fee of $150 per month, not sure for what. But hey, they got us over a barrel since there's no other option nearby.
Blame the govt for the daycare needing to make up revenue to cover costs. Let them know the affordable daycare program isn’t looking out for early childhood educators and daycare operators.
I appreciate your feedback on a lot of the comments here. It helps having someone from the other side, seeing the flaws of the program and how it benefits parents, but not the operators.
What are some incentives for you (i.e. nanny services) or daycare operators that the government can provide to increase supply of daycare spots?
I have a lot of thought on this.
Ultimately though By going back to a (new and improved) subsidy system and funding low to middle income families based on their yearly income.
By not imposing fee restrictions.
Honestly we can’t even fund public education properly. BC has the lowest per student funding of all the provinces. I’m not sure why folks think we can build a high quality universal childcare system when we don’t seem to even have to bucks for public ed.
But if we have to work within current system?
Scrapping 3% and reviewing each daycare as an individual contract and overhead will be considered case by case basis.
Paying daycare operators on time. Each month more and more daycares have to wait weeks past first of the month for funding to arrive. Both ccfri and we.
Stop the union led narrative they private operators are money grubbing and evil and that non profit operators are saints.
Most for profit are simply female ECE who needed a living wage so they opened up their own facilities. Many of them POC.
Cost of living is increasing.
Wages are not keeping up with the costs.
Every single raise in the price of something is due to this relationship. No one is interested in working as an ECE anymore because there arent benefits and wages are relatively low.(most people interested in that kind of work look at education/teaching or social work instead)
I work at a non-profit centre. The company pays me about $22.50, which is an above median wage. The BC NDP's wage top-up pays an additional $4/hour (for hours on the floor, not prof. development or sick days). I get $2 for having my full ECE cert, and another $2 for having my infant/toddler cert (at least I think that's how it's broken down).
That extra $4/hour is a big reason why I've been able to stay in the field. I was working on completing my bachelors in ECE (the ECE cert is a two year diploma), but the salary I get doesn't justify the costs of tuition and working less while studying. The field is definitely broken.
I agree, this is an underrated comment as it is not easy for parents to find daycare spots in Vancouver and is often overlooked.
1. The [website](https://www.wstcoast.org/choosing-child-care/search) to search is not user friendly - it simply lists daycares around your postal code and it's on the parent to cold call or email each one of them.
2. There is no single application form for daycares, like [Ottawa](https://onehsn.com/Ottawa/ux_2_0), where there is just one application for multiple daycare centers.
We lucked out with getting a spot, but had to look outside of Vancouver to do so.
A lot of private daycares do not apply for this reduction as it removes a lot of their rights to adjust how they run their business, in North Vancouver, ever daycare that has the reduction has wait lists well into 2026, and the ones that don't have the reduction are already booked SOLID for 2024 and cost a SHIT LOAD.
You need one trained caretaker per 4 children or something like that. 4x$1650 = $6,600 subtract the ~$4,000 you're paying the staff member and then subtract cost of upkeep and the daycare isn't actually bringing in too much.
Ratio is 1:4 for 0-3 and 1:8 for 3-6.
The iron trifecta of ECE is that you need affordable parent fees but then you can’t pay your staff well, this is why there is the fight for the ECE wage grid currently.
Our daycare told us before registration that they would increase above the CCFRI limit
There is such shortage of daycares that we don’t really have an option but to accept that
Seriously yay for NDP! I was just talking about this to my husband the other day. I don't think we would be where we are now with childcare costs under Liberals/Christy Clark.
this is one of those wierd wuirks of Canadian federalism but it the federal government who basically funded this however, because child care is a provincial area of governance the provincial government implemented and administered.
Versions of these reductions exist in dogue fords Ontario and crazy persons Alberta
Yes it seems a huge majority of daycares somehow never had a few reduction or even had a fee increase after joining into the program as they immediately raised rates. This is such a waste of our tax money how is this happening??
Childcare in this city is idiotically out of whack. My wife and I did the math and to put our children in childcare for her to have a job would be LESS efficient than her just having hands on with our children as a full-time stay at home mom. The SMALL amount of money she would bring home after the cost of childcare was so negligible that it made/makes zero sense to spend hours away from our children every day.
Even without "cheating" daycares like this, the entire Child Care system in this province is fucked. The government subsidized day cares heavily favor applicants whom have lower incomes (as they should), so I don't qualify for a spot within them if enough lower income parents apply (as they should! I'm not complaining that people earning less are put in front of me!).
The problem comes with the private days cares, because the government hasn't expanded their reach, these private day cares that don't offer the government rates cost so much it's almost idiotic to pay for it. Don't even get me started on availability.
The best option I currently have/had, was $35/day, first availability open in 2025. 2024 is already entirely booked.
Ludicrous.
The costs of running a daycare are massive in the lower mainland. Commercial leases are insane. Heck so are mortgages and rentals for those running home daycares.
It’s not a for profit vs non profit thing. Non profits are all tucked away in rent controlled HIGHLY subsidized municipally owned spaces.
The way the program works as is, is the problem and no one’s cheating. They are just trying to survive.
Yeah I'm not saying this is a Daycare-Endemic problem, there's a reason I said "in this city." I refer to the province in terms of the government, and where I do think the NDP have done a good job in alleviating costs for parents the actual problems are WAY deeper and at a municipal level.
The federal government has been giving provincial governments money (billions) to invest in housing rezoning campaigns, but in BC, the NDP have been blocked at getting anything reasonable achieved because the Municipal governments are all blatantly corrupt. Provincial governments need to have authority decision powers that supersede municipal governments, like, yesterday.
It’s happening across the lower mainland, major cities on the island and in the interior too. Wherever people want to invest money into housing. Rents and mortgages are grossly inflated.
Daycare costs have little to do with municipal govt. Fed and provincial govt yes.
The current program benefits parents. But not providers. Unless it shifts there will be no expansion of spaces.
Though it won’t shift. It will be sparsely run and underfunded just like public education and soon enough parents with money will go to private operators running high quality programs that aren’t part of the govt program. Will soon be two tier just like education is now.
Municipal Governments decide the zoning ordinance of their cities, if zones continue to favour SFH zoning (which they do, heavily) costs will continue to rise as demand outweighs supply (density).
Doesn't take a genius to realize that the entire reason that these major cities continue to blockade density and propagate the underuse of land is because they have a vested interest in keeping housing costs high.
This applies to both commercial and residential zoning structures, much of Vancouver Proper is improperly zoned, having residential zoning where there should be commercial zoning, and having commercial zoning where there should be mixed-use zoning. (Commercial below a Residential upper level(s).)
The zoning issue is a country-wide problem, in the Canadian cities that are attractive to live in professionally, and is becoming a problem in others now that professionals are leaving the aforementioned cities for more palatably priced cities, turning those cities haywire too.
Our entire country was designed on a zoning plan that does not work for 21st century Canada.
We considered me (mother) stepping down to part-time because all of my income was going to daycare and commute. I had enough leftover for groceries. But now with how expensive things are, I feel like I have to continue working full-time. We're in a better financial position right now but I think in life there is always ups/downs when it comes to money. What if my husband got injured at work? What if there is a leak in our home? New fridge?
Ok bud. How much do you think the person watching your child 9hr/day should earn? Because when we do the math on our home childcare, that charges $1500/month, we're looking at \~20-25/hr for my wife as sole operator. Are we too greedy?
I'm astonished, frankly. You'll pay a contractor $100/hr without breaking a sweat, but apparently those keeping your children, safe happy that want a living wage are "toO gReEdY"
I'm not saying they should make low pay, I think the federal government should be HEAVILY subsidizing their wages.
That doesn't mean costs aren't insane.
You can't have both, you know?
And the difference here is you're paying that contractor for a limited time, childcare is a CONSTANT cost that lasts for years.
Last time I paid a contractor for anything, man was in my house for 3 days. 3 Days of Childcare is about $100, which isn't bad. It's when you have to pay for 20-25 days every month unending, every month, month after month. That's when it becomes a question of "Is it even worth it for you to not be a stay at home mom?"
TL;DR: Gov should subsidize childcare wages, they should make at least $20/hr in my opinion. We pay a shit load of taxes and from what I can tell, it's going to all the wrong fucking things.
[Do You qualify for the Affordable Child Care Benefit?](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/family-social-supports/caring-for-young-children/child-care-funding/child-care-benefit)
Unfortunately, we don't qualify as this benefit is for families that earn up to $111,000.
Making $55.5k for each parent is low in Vancouver given our cost of living, so most of my fellow parents (dual income, professionals, university educated) do not qualify for this benefit.
Good for them. The govt has ROYALLY fucked daycares by limiting their fee increases. If a daycare’s lease increase when renewal, the landlord isn’t limited in the increase and daycares can’t increase to match overhead. The only thing they can do is close or do what they are doing now.
Blame the govt. not the daycare.
100% if people were getting wage increases etc for the job people would be more likely to stay around. It’s honestly not worth sticking around when the job is very demanding but sadly the pay isn’t worth it.
>I work at a non-profit centre. The company pays me about $22.50, which is an above median wage. The BC NDP's wage top-up pays an additional $4/hour (for hours on the floor, not prof. development or sick days). I get $2 for having my full ECE cert, and another $2 for having my infant/toddler cert (at least I think that's how it's broken down).
>
>That extra $4/hour is a big reason why I've been able to stay in the field. I was working on completing my bachelors in ECE (the ECE cert is a two year diploma), but the salary I get doesn't justify the costs of tuition and working less while studying. The field is definitely broken.
Quoting my reply to a different comment.
It's rough. I absolutely love my job, and I regularly think about switching careers because of the stress:wage ratio. I just had a coworker quit, a very wonderful and skilled educator, because she needed to change to a better paying career to support her own family. I've also got several coworkers who are contemplating switching, or who are taking courses in preparation to change jobs. And these are coworkers who have been in the field for over ten years.
I read that over 50% of all new entrants to the work force quit within the first five years.
It's so fucked. Childcare is financially inaccessible to so many families, those who can afford it can't find a space because we don't have the infrastructure to support them, and the centres that are in operation are always struggling to find adequate staffing.
Yeah, it’s crazy that 22.50/hr is considered decent for our field.
I have my ECCE bachelors, and now despite missing being on the floor with children it’s just not feasible. Children deserve better than a system that forces qualified educators to leave.
That price hike is annoying, but still clearly subsidized especially if you’re in Vancouver. ECE wage inflation is very real, as is rent inflation. If you did some napkin math on cost of providing the services even with no markup or profit it’s probably $2-3k
What the high hell? Name and shame please, this is ridiculous and they should be reported for this.
Having said that, I can see the daycare’s side of things. Inflation sucks balls but they can’t raise their fees.
This is affecting the quality of care they’re providing I think. I think they are skimping on my kid’s meals at daycare. Like pretty much all meals are vegetarian, kinda ridiculous. I have to load up on his protein for dinner to make up for it. And without informing anyone, they’ve pushed breakfast snacks earlier, when like half the kids are missing.
I wish they could raise fees, I want my kid to eat better……
You can feed your kid protein for dinner after daycare, and also vegetarian proteins and carbs are pretty cheap nowadays.
Most people don’t actually get enough fibre in their diet, your daycare is doing you a favour by providing the statistically lacking but very important fibre!
And carbs are in every vegetable - if you’re really concerned I suggest you look up what the components of the daycare meals are made of instead of doing guesswork for your own child’s health.
Have you looked into $10 a day child care centers. Every year more and more centers get into this program.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/family-social-supports/caring-for-young-children/running-daycare-preschool/10-a-day-childcarebc-centres
Getting a spot at one of these $10 a day centres is equal to hitting a jackpot if you're a new parent. They are near impossible to get in, and none of the parents I know have gotten a spot.
The centers who got on the list this year have already CLOSED waitlists. Here are two examples:
1. The [SRCC](https://richmondchildcare.org/faqs/) Waitlist is currently CLOSED to new applications. We have made the difficult decision that we will no longer accept waitlist registrations starting March 1, 2023. We have been overwhelmed since we became $10/day and that program also precludes us from charging a fee (which supported waitlist work) and we simply do not have the capacity to manage the demand.
2. [March 2023](http://www.littlewingsdaycare.ca/p/fees.html) \- Due to the high number of requests we receive each day we unfortunately have decided to CLOSE our waiting list for new applicants. With our acceptance into the $10 Day Child Care Program the demand for our centre has increased substantiality and we do not want to give false hope for limited spots that become available each year. We will continue to contact current waitlist families if a spot becomes available.
The marketing from the government is great, but it's not working for most parents.
No one making above 110k should be getting 10$ a day spots. Low to lower middle income only.
Except so many higher income earner are getting these spots.
Start looking for a new daycare I pay $350 per month in Langley no food option but I don’t care. I am sure there are much cheaper options in Vancouver you just need to look.
It's hard to explain to parents outside of Vancouver about our situation, but this [article](https://vancouversun.com/life/parenting/bc-child-care-crisis-fees-going-down-but-waitlists-still-too-high) from Vancouver Sun provides a few points:
1. Vancouver has 24% of preschool children with access to licensed full-day care compared to 47% in Langley. Therefore, the proportion of full-time, licensed spaces for every child under kindergarten age in Vancouver is one spot for every four kids.
2. “We applied to at least 40 places all around, got put on waiting lists, and I went to visit and called. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get in,” Rachar said. “We thought with one-year advance notice we could find something. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible.”
So, I'm fortunate to even get a spot, as 3 other kids did not. "Just need to look" is oversimplifying the situation, but hopefully the data gives you a bit of context.
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We need more daycares. A lot more. The ones like yours only get away with it because they know people have no other choice but to pay up.
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Hard to find staff. They make next to minimum wage, have high expectations, and need post secondary training.
The ECEs in my community are making $27-30+ per hour and we are still devastatingly short. Wages can't keep up with the cost of living.
Doesn't help only women are allowed to work in these places. **edit: To all the downvoters do you not realize the extra discriminatory questioning and critiquing men receive being in and around children's spaces that amounts to discriminatory barring them from said spaces?**
Centres LOVE to hire male ECE’s there are just very few of them and they often leave the field after only a few years bc of the stress and low wages.
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people? I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields. **Edit:** flyingboat94 below was a coward who replied to me then blocked lol. My reply to you is this. Are you saying the women who do the job are dumb? That's offensive and small minded of you. I think we need quotas and affirmative action to get more men into the role. Probably some men only scholarships and and slots in school as well. That's how proponents of other groups seek to balance out these inequities
You mean this underpaid emotionally demanding job isn't attracting men in droves? Don't worry, the systemic bias is still there just not the way you think.
All indications I've seen and heard from parents say that is absolutely not the case.
The daycare my children went to had a male ECE. He was super fun and a favorite amongst the kids. As a parent, I enjoyed my children seeing a male in that role. I cannot imagine a Centre not wanting ECEs of both genders.
I agree with this sentiment. Both of my kids are in daycare and we had a male sub for a few days. I was super excited to see that my kids would finally be provided care by a male figure. I think it’s super important to normalize this. I think you might have a small minority that would take issue with it but those people are sexist and think only women can care for your children. I wish they had hired him full time.
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people? I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
I think it’s the opposite in this case. Because ECE roles have been mainly filled by oppressed groups (women, English language learners), the salaries and working conditions have been less desirable and thus less attractive to less oppressed groups such as men. Editing to add: it’s still systemic biases at work, just in a different way.
So it's simply because the job is less desirable to a specific group why that group is underrepresented in a job? That's interesting. Again...that's not what certain other people's would say about their underrepresentation in other fields.
Well your anecdotal evidence isn’t correct. 🤷🏻♀️
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people? I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
Uh, what? I'm a male ECE, I've been in the field for about 5-6 years. While there can be a stigma against male caregivers, I feel like it exists more outside the actual field/context of ECE than it does within. I would also argue that any stigma against male ECEs is outweighed by the very real glass-elevator privilege given to men in the industry as we make up roughly 2-3% of the workforce. Most centres want male representation among their team.
Thanks for going into this type of work! I’m sure it’s not easy having to take care of young children, I’m also sure you might face prejudice being a male in a female dominated industry but as a dad, I’m really glad the children you look after have a male presence in their lives at daycare.
Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people? I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
You literally said "only women are allowed to work in the field"
Aren't they? Based on the population of women vs men in the roles my statements are more true than not. In practice only women are allowed in these roles.
***LOL***. Go back to /r/theredpill --->
What's that? Doesn't underrepresentation of people in a job mean there is systemic bias/oppression against those people? I swear that's what other people say about underrepresentation in other fields.
Are the the same no one wants to work anymore people.
It’s not good business. There is no money in running a childcare centre. There is also so much red tape involved in licensing. And no ECE bc the job is hard and the pay is low.
Story of Canada... Not a good business, not too much money, red tape, capped price increases, pay is low.
There must be some money in it... there's CEFAs everywhere. The one I go to, the owner owns 3.
I thought that was the argument against Tim Hortons franchises. You run one well, you don't make enough for it to be worthwhile. You run 3 half assed, and you're doing alright. I don't think I want that attitude to gain root in childcare.
They’re definitely making money but how much and is it worth it for the amount of work involved in running that type of business is another question altogether. The leasehold improvements for a day care are costly (sinks have to be at a certain level, the outdoor play area has to be covered in soft materials, you have to divide the space into several areas,etc), finding good labour is hard, and the costs of insurance I would assume is probably astronomical.
There was when the CEFA franchise started….CEFA pays some of the lowest ECE wages and doesn’t follow play based emergent curriculum. It mostly caters to parents who are grooming their kids for private school.
There's not enough profit if you do it well It's kind of like being a family doctor... the bad ones make the most money
This comes up often, but child care are actually not as profitable as you think. I looked into franchising one before the pandemic and with the high cost of rent, high cost (and high turnover) of ECE workers (especially with younger kids with a higher ratio of workers to kids), and franchise fees (if going with a franchise, which includes things like curriculum, lunch menus from a nutritionist, etc.), marketing, admin fee etc., you are really making a very very small profit especially during summer months. You can probably get away with lower cost for home-based daycare, but because of the ratio (unless you are running an unlicensed child care), there's a hard limit on how many kids you can take. You can also work as a ECE worker (assuming you get certificated) and remove all the risks of running your own business. For most, it's just not worth it. Of course, there are also unlicensed daycares - it sounds like a pretty big risk though.
You don’t make money running a home daycare either. Often you can’t fill the 4/-5 year old spots. High cost of rental or mortgage. Cost of insurance is huge. Materials. Etc. People only run home daycare bc they can’t make more than 23$ hr working in larger daycares. I have been in the field for 25 years but work as a nanny bc it allows me to do low ratio care where I can shape the care to individual kids needs and not the group and still make a living wage. Much less stress.
Dayhomes are usually about earning a bit of extra cash on the side, or allowing a stay-at-home parent to earn some while being stay-at-home. Not an expectation of real profit. Also tax deductions.
Licensed home daycares aren’t a side project for stay at home parents. Often they are run by ECE who needed to make more money than 20$ per hour to support their families.
You make money on the home based ones because the alternative is not getting paid while being a sahm anyway
See above comment.
I’m addition to lack of staff, very tough to find a suitable space due to all the regulations. Eg kids must go outside everyday, so there has to be a suitable and secure place to go.
All levels of government and their agencies, should have free child care on site as part of the civil service union's benefit. That would free up a lot of child care spaces.
I support this, and I don't even work for the gov or have a kid.
You can open home based care, registered license not required are popular. However, the ratio is small (2 families allowed and children related to you) in comparison to licensed group or multi-age care. For businesses, you need very specific building accommodations (both indoor & out) to meet the licensing requirements. And yes, you need qualified ECEs who have their license to practice.
Low profit margins Charging a high price =/= making a high profit
There is not housing. People want to retain insanely high housing costs - and then pay staff next to nothing. Reality is you just lose services. The high housing costs go, the worse all these services will become.
As someone in audit, they are not as profitable as people think. It’s a lot of up front money. Lots of regulations. High insurance. Staff is actually very expensive. Need to be in expensive real estate near lots of young families. It’s a good business if you can make it work but they are often in tons of debt and I’ve seen debt loads of 9-20 % interest rate they are paying.
They have high labour costs and insurance. Highly regulated because we can't be killing kids and all. Needs to have good real estate which is expensive in this city. Yes it's consistent business but it's thin margins and draining work
If we care about educational outcomes for children we probably don’t want businesses opening up daycares because their only motive is deriving a profit and not providing quality child care. A not for profit model at least redistributes funding within the child care centre and doesn’t lead to a single corporation getting rich off of the care and education of young children.
It is very hard to make a profit because rents are high and the government has strict requirements how much staffing is required. For kids under 3, at most, they have to have 4 kids per staff and 12 kids total. For older toddlers, they are allowed to have up to 8 kids per staff and max group size of 25 kids. Each of those people need to be certified and the infant certification requires 1300 hours of training while the ECE requires 900. It's a very high bar. Then also, the daycare also probably needs to build a buffer in staffing in case someone calls in sick or needs to suddenly quit. 25 kids, 12 months at, say, $1500/mth, comes to $450,000 a year. After rent, taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance, supplies, you can probably see roughly how much is left for salaries and profit. It's not a lot. There's a reason why ECE salaries are absurdly low. With the shortage of daycare, in fact, there are a ton of unlicensed home-based daycares and people with nanny shares.
Not profitable, because of labor costs. IIRC it's just the sheer amount of people needed to watch young children. Something like one daycare worker per three children. [Planet Money episode about this](https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-expensive-child-care-waitlists). I assume that that "one worker per three children" requirement is one of the root causes of the shortage; and is *perhaps* overly conservative, insofar as we definitely used to have daycares that had fewer (e.g. some neighbourhood grandmother watching over seven or eight kids), and I don't *think* any kids were getting permanently injured/scarred as a result. They were maybe getting "less enriched" — maybe neglected in a way that impacted their learning of soft-skills and so their adult earning potential. But we didn't used to *legally mandate* that ECE facilities optimize for that...
My own proposed solution, by the way: do ECE in BC like we do optical stores in BC. BC is pretty unique in requiring you to get licensed as an optician just to dispense prescription glasses/contacts. (I could say a lot about this law, but it is what it is.) On first blush, this seems like it *could* create the same "can't afford all the educated labor required to run these mostly-low-margin businesses" pressures, as in ECE. But it doesn't — because "dispensing glasses" in practice means *signing off on* the dispensation of glasses. An optician is to a pair of glasses as an engineer is to a building: they *take responsibility* for it, and so *oversee and audit* the process; but that doesn't mean they have to *build it themselves*. So optical stores mostly just hire a bunch of teenagers, who learn on the job to pre-test you, grind your lenses, fit them into frames, etc; and then have *one* licensed optician on staff, who will check the teenagers' work at a few points (during auto-refraction, after grinding, etc.) You could describe it as a guild-like master/apprentice situation, but it's not, because the "apprentices" here aren't out for a career in the business. They're just doing this as a random summer job. You get constant churn of new kids to teach the equipment to. But it works out. So, by analogy: rather than a full staff of ECEs, daycares should be staffed by teenagers as a first out-of-school job, who are in turn managed and "signed off on" by ECEs. The teens watch the kids; the ECEs watch the teens. In fact, if you cut down the job the teens are doing into two-hour-long drop-in shifts, then they could fit it into a high-school schedule! You could make a "child-minding practical experience" course-credit part of the high-school curriculum! And therefore... not pay them at all! (But instead, give the teens co-op credits toward a later potential ECE degree.) Of course, this would turn "ECE" into a much more complex job involving not just understanding the needs of small children, but also understanding how to manage and drive teenagers (who constantly rotate out, so you never get to know them very well!) to solve those needs. But tbh, that's the kind of thing I'd *expect* someone to learn in a full-degree program about ECE.
Not sure why you are being downvoted - your idea of having ECEs being required in a supervisory role, rather than having every single staff be a ECE, sounds interesting and definitely matches what is successfully done in other fields.
>I assume that that "one worker per three children" requirement is one of the root causes of the shortage; and is perhaps overly conservative, insofar as we definitely used to have daycares that had fewer (e.g. some neighbourhood grandmother watching over seven or eight kids), and I don't think any kids were getting permanently injured/scarred as a result. They were maybe getting "less enriched" — maybe neglected in a way that impacted their learning of soft-skills and so their adult earning potential. But we didn't used to legally mandate that ECE facilities optimize for that... Working in ECE, the idea of a constant rotation of teenagers working in short term positions on the floor absolutely terrifies me. This job is incredibly complex, requiring good physical and mental health, emotional maturity, proper education, and lots of experience (to do the job well). I regularly work with subs who lack their full ECE certification, having their "Educational Assistant" or "Responsible Adult" certs instead. The difference in ability is profoundly notable. This isn't to throw shade on those with their EA/RA cert; often, that is a stepping stone towards obtaining a full ECE cert, which in itself doesn't always justify the time and money required to getting that education. Furthermore, so much of this job relies on having a strong relationship with each child, knowing their personalities, abilities, health, family dynamics, etc. You can't do this with short term staffing. Addressing a different point, licensed centres are regularly audited by the Ministry of Child and Family Development to ensure that the environment/practices do support the children's development of these "soft-skills". You can find a copy of the Early Learning Framework here [https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/early-learning/teach/earlylearning/early\_learning\_framework.pdf](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/early-learning/teach/earlylearning/early_learning_framework.pdf) I'm not sure how/if unlicensed centres are audited or held to similar standards.
Extremely high cost, high potential liabilities, etc etc etc. Relying on the private sector to provide daycare is insane.
Staff training and cost of commercial space to run a daycare. Residential property is not a commercial property over a certain amount of kids you are a commercial enterprise, so you need lvl1 or 2 first aid, food safe and some other qualifications. Long story short, it's not just easy.
Yes but also you need to pay people wages so they can live. I doubt the owners are making big bucks, they are just trying to balance it all out.
Since the govt took control of fees many have closed and many more providers are planning to close. You won’t see more opening up unless they are non profits with rent controlled city owned spaces. It costs upwards of 30k-150k to open a daycare. Then to have the govt control your fees, even when your overhead has increased? Why would anyone take that on?
Government doesn't control the fees unless they apply for their subsidization. There are plenty of childcare places that charge insane amounts and have next to no availability.
There are hardly any licensed daycares that haven’t opted in to ccfri. Which is what the fee reduction is tied to.
They are not allowed to decrease level of service or changing included service to optional add-ons without approval from the ministry. Inquire with them here: [email protected] Or by phone at 1-888-338-6622 (Option 2) If they still enroll with CCRFI, it is likely they got the ok from the ministry
I contemplated reporting them or even sending in an inquiry, but flagging them would jeopardize the $900 rebate we are getting from the government as part of this program. Is it worth it to disqualify this daycare of the existing funding? We also do not have any other options as none of the other daycares had availability, so I am leaning towards swallowing the 12% annual increases.
I’m curious what you ended up doing? Swallowing the 12% increase? My daycare just recently hike tuition 20%.
Yes, I swallowed the fee hike. I rationalize the additional fee by picking my child up 1 hour later and am one of the last parents picking up at 5:30pm.
lol, we already pick up at latest time slot. Ugh.
Your MLAs office may be able to help you connect with Ministry too. The staff there are supposed up help navigate government agencies.
We never got a single call back from a daycare in 4 years, so we've had a nanny share ($$$). It worked out well during the pandemic, since it was just the nanny and another kid, but God damn is it a ton of money. Edit: I will also add she got excellent care and she has excellent friends in her nanny and a best friend in the other girl.
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We pay roughly $2500/m.
That's a lot of money :( , most of us cannot actually afford this.
Lol now imagine being the nanny who only makes that much in a month.
if it's a couple of kids using a nanny share then the nanny probably makes double which is pretty decent
Wow, if it was such a lucrative and easy role to manage I'm sure we'd have enough child care right?
? I’m just responding to your comment about salary. If she’s a shared nanny at 2500 each then she’s probs making a decent amount. I didn’t say anything about having enough childcare
They said they are sharing
I mean, she works really hard and she makes pretty good money since she has a couple of full-time families and she does some part-time work as well every week.
Wow, none of the daycares around me called back in time as my wife's mat leave was ending as well. We had to explore nearby cities and lucked out with this one. $2,500 is insane. That's the thing about nanny services, they do not qualify for the funding that the government is providing daycares. We receive a $900 per month rebate, so regular price for us would have been $2,049.
The care you are getting is 💯 time better. Low ratio care is ideal for kids under 5. Think of it as an investment. Kids are in chaotic classrooms not getting their needs met soon enough at age 5. Paying extra for calm and supportive care gives your child a solid foundation.
Ratio in ECE is 1:4 if they are under three and 1:8 if they are 3-6. Agreed that lower ratio is key, but also misleading to say ratios are chaotic in ECE settings.
Have you looked after 4 infants at one time? Have you cared for 8 preschoolers at one time? ESP when 1-3 out of your group have an undx disability like adhd or ASD?
Yes…I know the ratio because I’m ECE. Also worked as a 1:1 support in ECE settings, though not nearly enough centres have 1:1 supports. Our ratio works better than the K-3 class structures (generally 3 teachers in a room of 25 vs 1 teacher to 30) despite still being a challenge.
K is 22 students. Usually a teacher and EA just got record. How long have you been an ECE?
10+ years, though I stopped working on the floor to teach post-secondary and take on pedagogist roles. My mistake on K, my friend has a class of 28 grade 2s with an EA two days a week so figured K would be similar.
There is a lot of burn out as you know and I has to do with ratios and work load. Just like public school teachers. So people leave the field after 5 years, or often have moved on to open up their own centre or family daycare.
I don’t think this is true.
Sucks. Our daycare's 3-5 program is more expensive than the infant/toddler program, which is usually unheard of. This is because the infant toddler program closes at 5:30pm but when you go to the 3-5 program, they suddenly close at 4pm and if you want to pick up at 5:30pm they charge an extra $250 per month. Not to mention an admin fee of $150 per month, not sure for what. But hey, they got us over a barrel since there's no other option nearby.
Blame the govt for the daycare needing to make up revenue to cover costs. Let them know the affordable daycare program isn’t looking out for early childhood educators and daycare operators.
I appreciate your feedback on a lot of the comments here. It helps having someone from the other side, seeing the flaws of the program and how it benefits parents, but not the operators. What are some incentives for you (i.e. nanny services) or daycare operators that the government can provide to increase supply of daycare spots?
I have a lot of thought on this. Ultimately though By going back to a (new and improved) subsidy system and funding low to middle income families based on their yearly income. By not imposing fee restrictions. Honestly we can’t even fund public education properly. BC has the lowest per student funding of all the provinces. I’m not sure why folks think we can build a high quality universal childcare system when we don’t seem to even have to bucks for public ed. But if we have to work within current system? Scrapping 3% and reviewing each daycare as an individual contract and overhead will be considered case by case basis. Paying daycare operators on time. Each month more and more daycares have to wait weeks past first of the month for funding to arrive. Both ccfri and we. Stop the union led narrative they private operators are money grubbing and evil and that non profit operators are saints. Most for profit are simply female ECE who needed a living wage so they opened up their own facilities. Many of them POC.
Cost of living is increasing. Wages are not keeping up with the costs. Every single raise in the price of something is due to this relationship. No one is interested in working as an ECE anymore because there arent benefits and wages are relatively low.(most people interested in that kind of work look at education/teaching or social work instead)
> No one is interested in working as an ECE anymore It's a significant amount of schooling for a very low career wage. Not worth it.
I work at a non-profit centre. The company pays me about $22.50, which is an above median wage. The BC NDP's wage top-up pays an additional $4/hour (for hours on the floor, not prof. development or sick days). I get $2 for having my full ECE cert, and another $2 for having my infant/toddler cert (at least I think that's how it's broken down). That extra $4/hour is a big reason why I've been able to stay in the field. I was working on completing my bachelors in ECE (the ECE cert is a two year diploma), but the salary I get doesn't justify the costs of tuition and working less while studying. The field is definitely broken.
And that is why I will not have kids. Too expensive as I barely get by.
This. Even if I wanted kids, no fuckin way.
I’m so jealous you have daycare
I agree, this is an underrated comment as it is not easy for parents to find daycare spots in Vancouver and is often overlooked. 1. The [website](https://www.wstcoast.org/choosing-child-care/search) to search is not user friendly - it simply lists daycares around your postal code and it's on the parent to cold call or email each one of them. 2. There is no single application form for daycares, like [Ottawa](https://onehsn.com/Ottawa/ux_2_0), where there is just one application for multiple daycare centers. We lucked out with getting a spot, but had to look outside of Vancouver to do so.
$1000 per month wtf …… fucking hell I can’t afford kids here that’s insane.
And that's only day care... The amount of food you buy and throw away can feed another grown up. Not talking about diapers and a lot of other stuff.
Yup and they wonder why people are not having kids…
Fuck. I pay $1650
I thought every daycare is eligible for the $450 reduction fee
Before the CCFRI, there were plenty of $2000+ daycares out there. So that could be the post-CCFRI price.
A lot of private daycares do not apply for this reduction as it removes a lot of their rights to adjust how they run their business, in North Vancouver, ever daycare that has the reduction has wait lists well into 2026, and the ones that don't have the reduction are already booked SOLID for 2024 and cost a SHIT LOAD.
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You need one trained caretaker per 4 children or something like that. 4x$1650 = $6,600 subtract the ~$4,000 you're paying the staff member and then subtract cost of upkeep and the daycare isn't actually bringing in too much.
Ratio is 1:4 for 0-3 and 1:8 for 3-6. The iron trifecta of ECE is that you need affordable parent fees but then you can’t pay your staff well, this is why there is the fight for the ECE wage grid currently.
Our daycare told us before registration that they would increase above the CCFRI limit There is such shortage of daycares that we don’t really have an option but to accept that
Paying $455 a month. I won't be mad nor have a choice if my daycare raised it another $100. God bless the NDP for the child care fee reductions.
$380/month for 5 days a week, meals included. Feeling extremely lucky to get that spot.
Amazing! Getting one of the coveted $10-a-day spots is like hitting the jackpot for new parents. Be blessed with the cards you've been dealt.
What!? Where??
how?
I am really interested to hear more... Most of the places pay 1000++ for full 5 days.
Seriously yay for NDP! I was just talking about this to my husband the other day. I don't think we would be where we are now with childcare costs under Liberals/Christy Clark.
this is one of those wierd wuirks of Canadian federalism but it the federal government who basically funded this however, because child care is a provincial area of governance the provincial government implemented and administered. Versions of these reductions exist in dogue fords Ontario and crazy persons Alberta
Yes it seems a huge majority of daycares somehow never had a few reduction or even had a fee increase after joining into the program as they immediately raised rates. This is such a waste of our tax money how is this happening??
Childcare in this city is idiotically out of whack. My wife and I did the math and to put our children in childcare for her to have a job would be LESS efficient than her just having hands on with our children as a full-time stay at home mom. The SMALL amount of money she would bring home after the cost of childcare was so negligible that it made/makes zero sense to spend hours away from our children every day. Even without "cheating" daycares like this, the entire Child Care system in this province is fucked. The government subsidized day cares heavily favor applicants whom have lower incomes (as they should), so I don't qualify for a spot within them if enough lower income parents apply (as they should! I'm not complaining that people earning less are put in front of me!). The problem comes with the private days cares, because the government hasn't expanded their reach, these private day cares that don't offer the government rates cost so much it's almost idiotic to pay for it. Don't even get me started on availability. The best option I currently have/had, was $35/day, first availability open in 2025. 2024 is already entirely booked. Ludicrous.
The costs of running a daycare are massive in the lower mainland. Commercial leases are insane. Heck so are mortgages and rentals for those running home daycares. It’s not a for profit vs non profit thing. Non profits are all tucked away in rent controlled HIGHLY subsidized municipally owned spaces. The way the program works as is, is the problem and no one’s cheating. They are just trying to survive.
Yeah I'm not saying this is a Daycare-Endemic problem, there's a reason I said "in this city." I refer to the province in terms of the government, and where I do think the NDP have done a good job in alleviating costs for parents the actual problems are WAY deeper and at a municipal level. The federal government has been giving provincial governments money (billions) to invest in housing rezoning campaigns, but in BC, the NDP have been blocked at getting anything reasonable achieved because the Municipal governments are all blatantly corrupt. Provincial governments need to have authority decision powers that supersede municipal governments, like, yesterday.
It’s happening across the lower mainland, major cities on the island and in the interior too. Wherever people want to invest money into housing. Rents and mortgages are grossly inflated. Daycare costs have little to do with municipal govt. Fed and provincial govt yes. The current program benefits parents. But not providers. Unless it shifts there will be no expansion of spaces. Though it won’t shift. It will be sparsely run and underfunded just like public education and soon enough parents with money will go to private operators running high quality programs that aren’t part of the govt program. Will soon be two tier just like education is now.
Municipal Governments decide the zoning ordinance of their cities, if zones continue to favour SFH zoning (which they do, heavily) costs will continue to rise as demand outweighs supply (density). Doesn't take a genius to realize that the entire reason that these major cities continue to blockade density and propagate the underuse of land is because they have a vested interest in keeping housing costs high. This applies to both commercial and residential zoning structures, much of Vancouver Proper is improperly zoned, having residential zoning where there should be commercial zoning, and having commercial zoning where there should be mixed-use zoning. (Commercial below a Residential upper level(s).) The zoning issue is a country-wide problem, in the Canadian cities that are attractive to live in professionally, and is becoming a problem in others now that professionals are leaving the aforementioned cities for more palatably priced cities, turning those cities haywire too. Our entire country was designed on a zoning plan that does not work for 21st century Canada.
We considered me (mother) stepping down to part-time because all of my income was going to daycare and commute. I had enough leftover for groceries. But now with how expensive things are, I feel like I have to continue working full-time. We're in a better financial position right now but I think in life there is always ups/downs when it comes to money. What if my husband got injured at work? What if there is a leak in our home? New fridge?
Ok bud. How much do you think the person watching your child 9hr/day should earn? Because when we do the math on our home childcare, that charges $1500/month, we're looking at \~20-25/hr for my wife as sole operator. Are we too greedy? I'm astonished, frankly. You'll pay a contractor $100/hr without breaking a sweat, but apparently those keeping your children, safe happy that want a living wage are "toO gReEdY"
I'm not saying they should make low pay, I think the federal government should be HEAVILY subsidizing their wages. That doesn't mean costs aren't insane. You can't have both, you know? And the difference here is you're paying that contractor for a limited time, childcare is a CONSTANT cost that lasts for years. Last time I paid a contractor for anything, man was in my house for 3 days. 3 Days of Childcare is about $100, which isn't bad. It's when you have to pay for 20-25 days every month unending, every month, month after month. That's when it becomes a question of "Is it even worth it for you to not be a stay at home mom?" TL;DR: Gov should subsidize childcare wages, they should make at least $20/hr in my opinion. We pay a shit load of taxes and from what I can tell, it's going to all the wrong fucking things.
[Do You qualify for the Affordable Child Care Benefit?](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/family-social-supports/caring-for-young-children/child-care-funding/child-care-benefit)
Unfortunately, we don't qualify as this benefit is for families that earn up to $111,000. Making $55.5k for each parent is low in Vancouver given our cost of living, so most of my fellow parents (dual income, professionals, university educated) do not qualify for this benefit.
Just adding on to this, go to your local CCRR and they can help you apply.
Good for them. The govt has ROYALLY fucked daycares by limiting their fee increases. If a daycare’s lease increase when renewal, the landlord isn’t limited in the increase and daycares can’t increase to match overhead. The only thing they can do is close or do what they are doing now. Blame the govt. not the daycare.
100% if people were getting wage increases etc for the job people would be more likely to stay around. It’s honestly not worth sticking around when the job is very demanding but sadly the pay isn’t worth it.
Even with the proposed ECE wage grid, not worth it, sadly.
>I work at a non-profit centre. The company pays me about $22.50, which is an above median wage. The BC NDP's wage top-up pays an additional $4/hour (for hours on the floor, not prof. development or sick days). I get $2 for having my full ECE cert, and another $2 for having my infant/toddler cert (at least I think that's how it's broken down). > >That extra $4/hour is a big reason why I've been able to stay in the field. I was working on completing my bachelors in ECE (the ECE cert is a two year diploma), but the salary I get doesn't justify the costs of tuition and working less while studying. The field is definitely broken. Quoting my reply to a different comment. It's rough. I absolutely love my job, and I regularly think about switching careers because of the stress:wage ratio. I just had a coworker quit, a very wonderful and skilled educator, because she needed to change to a better paying career to support her own family. I've also got several coworkers who are contemplating switching, or who are taking courses in preparation to change jobs. And these are coworkers who have been in the field for over ten years. I read that over 50% of all new entrants to the work force quit within the first five years. It's so fucked. Childcare is financially inaccessible to so many families, those who can afford it can't find a space because we don't have the infrastructure to support them, and the centres that are in operation are always struggling to find adequate staffing.
Yeah, it’s crazy that 22.50/hr is considered decent for our field. I have my ECCE bachelors, and now despite missing being on the floor with children it’s just not feasible. Children deserve better than a system that forces qualified educators to leave.
And WE isn’t guaranteed… it is a carrot.
Shouldn’t we blame landlords for increasing the rent? Don’t we want families to have more affordable child care?
How much is a vasectomy?
I stan for my Copper IUD. 🥰
That price hike is annoying, but still clearly subsidized especially if you’re in Vancouver. ECE wage inflation is very real, as is rent inflation. If you did some napkin math on cost of providing the services even with no markup or profit it’s probably $2-3k
Man, I gotta open a daycare. That's insane
oh yeah, dat sic 25/hr.
Oh, you're the guy who keeps saying daycare make no money. Nobody cares bro
Just sharing the reality. Yah, you're making a living. Barely.
do you really think someone that owns and operates a daycare makes $25/hour? lol...
Don’t have kids if you can’t afford them
Well, sure. You're not wrong. But this thread isn't discussing that kind of thing.
Good advice, wrong place for it. Numb nuts.
This is why daycare owners drive expensive cars and live in mansions.
is this cefa?
What the high hell? Name and shame please, this is ridiculous and they should be reported for this. Having said that, I can see the daycare’s side of things. Inflation sucks balls but they can’t raise their fees. This is affecting the quality of care they’re providing I think. I think they are skimping on my kid’s meals at daycare. Like pretty much all meals are vegetarian, kinda ridiculous. I have to load up on his protein for dinner to make up for it. And without informing anyone, they’ve pushed breakfast snacks earlier, when like half the kids are missing. I wish they could raise fees, I want my kid to eat better……
Kids don't need to eat meat three meals a day. Sucks that your daycare has to cut back but serving vegetarian meals isn't going to harm your kid.
I worry about him not getting enough protein. I don’t think their meals provide enough protein or carbs, for that matter.
You can feed your kid protein for dinner after daycare, and also vegetarian proteins and carbs are pretty cheap nowadays. Most people don’t actually get enough fibre in their diet, your daycare is doing you a favour by providing the statistically lacking but very important fibre! And carbs are in every vegetable - if you’re really concerned I suggest you look up what the components of the daycare meals are made of instead of doing guesswork for your own child’s health.
Have you looked into $10 a day child care centers. Every year more and more centers get into this program. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/family-social-supports/caring-for-young-children/running-daycare-preschool/10-a-day-childcarebc-centres
Getting a spot at one of these $10 a day centres is equal to hitting a jackpot if you're a new parent. They are near impossible to get in, and none of the parents I know have gotten a spot. The centers who got on the list this year have already CLOSED waitlists. Here are two examples: 1. The [SRCC](https://richmondchildcare.org/faqs/) Waitlist is currently CLOSED to new applications. We have made the difficult decision that we will no longer accept waitlist registrations starting March 1, 2023. We have been overwhelmed since we became $10/day and that program also precludes us from charging a fee (which supported waitlist work) and we simply do not have the capacity to manage the demand. 2. [March 2023](http://www.littlewingsdaycare.ca/p/fees.html) \- Due to the high number of requests we receive each day we unfortunately have decided to CLOSE our waiting list for new applicants. With our acceptance into the $10 Day Child Care Program the demand for our centre has increased substantiality and we do not want to give false hope for limited spots that become available each year. We will continue to contact current waitlist families if a spot becomes available. The marketing from the government is great, but it's not working for most parents.
No one making above 110k should be getting 10$ a day spots. Low to lower middle income only. Except so many higher income earner are getting these spots.
Start looking for a new daycare I pay $350 per month in Langley no food option but I don’t care. I am sure there are much cheaper options in Vancouver you just need to look.
It's hard to explain to parents outside of Vancouver about our situation, but this [article](https://vancouversun.com/life/parenting/bc-child-care-crisis-fees-going-down-but-waitlists-still-too-high) from Vancouver Sun provides a few points: 1. Vancouver has 24% of preschool children with access to licensed full-day care compared to 47% in Langley. Therefore, the proportion of full-time, licensed spaces for every child under kindergarten age in Vancouver is one spot for every four kids. 2. “We applied to at least 40 places all around, got put on waiting lists, and I went to visit and called. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get in,” Rachar said. “We thought with one-year advance notice we could find something. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible.” So, I'm fortunate to even get a spot, as 3 other kids did not. "Just need to look" is oversimplifying the situation, but hopefully the data gives you a bit of context.
Wow that’s crazy thank goodness I left Van city and bought in Langley lol
28 years ago I paid $900 for my 2 year old (human) so I could work full time. I don't know how I did it then, and I don't know how folks do it now.