Child-care savings kick in Dec. 1 but not all B.C. parents will get the benefits

Nicole Williams felt a wave of relief when she finally found a great daycare for her three-year-old son after years of searching.

That optimism washed away when the 37-year-old learned that the Greater Victoria daycare won’t be participating in the B.C. NDP government’s child-care subsidy program which, effective Dec. 1, will cut fees in half for thousands of parents.

“It’s really hard for me to hear friends who are earning over $100,000 a year and they’re going to get this money off because their daycare participates” in the child-care fee reduction program, said Williams, a teacher and the sole breadwinner for her family of four. “And we’re earning about half that.”

So, while other parents are poised to save hundreds of dollars a month, Williams’ daycare fees of $700 a month will remain unchanged.

Critics say this exposes the inequitable and somewhat random nature of the government’s child-care program that is leaving some parents behind.

Some are paying $10-a-day daycare through a pilot project, while others will be paying around $20-a-day. Parents whose children are in unlicensed daycares or preschools and daycares that opt out of the fee-reduction program will get no savings at all, which they say is unfair.

Child care advocates say the new subsidies, which will apply to 96,000 children in the province, brings $10-a-day daycare, a central plank of the B.C. NDP’s 2017 election platform, closer to reality.

A Postmedia News analysis of daycares participating in the government program shows an uneven distribution. As a result, proportionally more parents in Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria are receiving savings than parents in parts of the Okanagan and the Interior.

In September, the NDP announced subsidies to bring down the average daycare fee to $21 a day from an average of $53 a day. The savings vary depending on what kind of child care parents are enrolled in but the most a parent can save is $550 a month if their child is under three and attends a group-based daycare.

The federal government is kicking in $3.2 billion over five years, part of a national promise of $10-a-day child care by 2026.

A provincial pilot program to subsidize daycare spaces to $10-a-day is also expanding and by the end of the year will apply to 12,600 spaces.

According to B.C.’s Education Ministry, approximately 4,400 child care facilities are participating in the fee-reduction program. Around 2,800 are so-called group daycares, with 96 per cent of those eligible for the program. Around 1,600 are small daycares that operate in private homes, and 90 per cent of those are eligible.

Unlicensed daycares and preschools are not eligible to receive the funding.

Tara Bisgrove, who has owned and operated Victoria-based Precious Moments Daycare for 33 years, said she feels forced to participate in a system that doesn’t work for private, family-based daycares.

Bisgrove, a licensed early childhood teacher who looks after seven kids in the basement suite of her home, is worried about the added administrative burden of filing the monthly reports required to participate.

“A lot of private providers that feel like they’re being pushed into the system,” she said. If she doesn’t opt in, she’ll lose business since parents will avoid a daycare charging full fees of around $1,000 a month when others are paying half that.

“It was a really challenging decision because I’m getting a lot of paperwork that has to be done monthly, and I’m giving up a lot of my freedom,” said the 61-year-old.

When Bisgrove does opt in, she’ll get a $4-an-hour top up to her salary as part of the government’s wage boost for early childhood teachers.

Sharon Gregson, spokesperson for the $10 a Day Child Care Campaign, said while she’s aware some child care operators have opted out of the fee reduction, the new savings are big enough that there will be intense pressure to opt in.

“It’s almost mean of providers not to participate because it’s literally hundreds of dollars that the family could be saving for the sake of a little bit of paperwork” for the child care provider, she said.

As an incentive to participate, the government is increasing the administrative funding it provides to child care operators. The funding, which can be used for operating costs or staff wages, will double for group daycares and triple or quadruple for home-based daycares.

Child care centres participating in the fee reduction must agree to a three per cent annual cap on price increases, to ensure centres don’t raise fees to offset savings for parents.

The B.C. Liberal child care critic, Karin Kirkpatrick, said the fee cap puts the squeeze on child care operators who are facing rising costs for rent, utilities and wages. It could have the unintended consequence, she said, of child care centres cutting services such as meal programs.

Kirkpatrick said a more equitable way to roll out the program is to give the highest savings to lower and middle income parents.

“You could have somebody that’s got a substantial income, they’re getting the $10 (a day child care) just because they happen to live in the right place,” she said. “And you may have some young mom who doesn’t have a high income really struggling to pay and they’re still paying the full amount.”

But Katrina Chen, B.C.’s minister of state for child care, has pointed out that lower- to middle-income parents earning a household income less than $111,000 a year are eligible for a second subsidy. The affordable child care benefit, when coupled with the Dec. 1 savings, could bring their child care fees almost to zero.

Williams, who gets $550 a month off her child care fees thanks to the affordable child care benefit, said the government could have upped the subsidy paid out to lower- and middle-income families and increased the income threshold to allow more British Columbians to receive the benefit.

The affordable child care benefit brings Williams’ daycare fees down from $1,250 a month to $700 but if her daycare participated in the fee reduction, she’d pay closer to $260 a month, saving more than $5,000 a year.

“It would mean we could think about putting money in our kids’ savings accounts. And maybe we could actually afford a second car,” she said. “We are surviving on what I would say is kind of the bare minimum to be comfortable.”

kderosa@postmedia.com