While fees for child care in Simcoe County decrease, the need is increasing.
This was one of the points made by Samantha Zuercher, the county’s acting director of children's services, during a presentation to councillors on the county’s Licensed Child Care and Early Years System Funding Allocations on Tuesday.
Zuercher provided an overview on what Children Services provides throughout the county, explaining that the upper-tier municipality serves as the consolidated service manager that supports licensed child care, Early ON Child and Family Centres and Special Needs Resourcing agencies across the county, as well as in the separated cities of Barrie and Orillia.
“At the end of 2022, the county had just under 200 licensed child-care programs, and supported approximately 10,000 operating spaces in the child-care sector," she said. "There were 34 Early ON Child Care Centres between main sites and satellite centres, and we offered special-needs support through three lead agencies."
The county has since seen an increase to those numbers and now sits at just over 200 centres, Zuercher added.
Funding opportunities for licensed child-care specifically cover a number of areas, she explained, including the child-care fee subsidy, which supported just over 4,100 children in 2022.
The county also provided wage-enhancement funding to help increase the wages of educators working within the system, and in 2022 it provided 53 opportunities to build the skills and knowledge of those working in the field.
Funding allotment also includes general operating grants, as well as the introduction of the new Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program, which is a five-year plan that's being implemented in stages to make child care more accessible and affordable to families.
“That program was introduced last year and began to reduce the cost of care for families accessing licensed child care by 25 per cent," Zuercher said. "That funding has increased in 2023 to reduce the cost families are paying by an additional 37 per cent. What that means is families are paying approximately 47 per cent of what they were paying for child care in March 2022.
But as the cost of child care begins to decrease, the demand for child care is increasing, she added.
"At the beginning of 2023, the Ministry of Education did determine notional allocations for all municipalities across the province for new space expansion in child care," Zuercher said. "The County of Simcoe was selected as the third highest number of spaces due to our growth, so between 2022 and 2026 we are targeted to increase 3,081 new child-care spaces across our area.
"With that increase, we have received a significant demand from operators and licensees from across the province who are interested in becoming operators within our area,” she added.
“That’s why we are all here. That’s our future generation out there,” responded Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor James Leduc, who is also chair of the county's human services section.
Collingwood Mayor Yvonne Hamlin was curious when the county could anticipate seeing this new funding from the federal government.
“Late June, early July is when (we) expect it to be available," Zuercher said. "We are just waiting for information on that. We were told late spring … (but) we are not stopping our work in the meantime. We are getting things ready so that once we have that we can proceed."
County council later approved, in principle, program strategies, guidelines and approaches, in conjunction with 2023 service provider proposed funding allocations, as well a plan to maximize a 2023 one-time provincial transitional grant to offset and assist with the new required cost sharing of 50/50 provincial-municipal administrative funding.
Councillors also voted in favour, again in principle, of redirecting the municipal savings to the social services reserve to help offset yearly budget pressures in the future.
These items will still need to be ratified at an upcoming council meeting.
According to a staff report, the County of Simcoe’s 2023 children's services envelope totals more than $104 million, with federal contributions totalling $59.5 million and the province providing $41 million in funding. The municipal contribution totals $3,678,119 and proposed 2023 service provider allocations have been determined by Ministry of Education guidelines, county policy, available resources, and ongoing analysis of local system needs.
