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Children in poverty: Daycare helps young families

NANAIMO – Little Ferns provides classes, skill building for parents in school.

Services offered by Little Ferns Early Learning Centre are invaluable to young parents.

Little Ferns offers child care and also provides Young Parent Program services for young parents (teenage to 24 years old), enabling them to earn a high school diploma while having their children cared for. Bus passes and grocery vouchers are also provided.

Amy Collum, Little Ferns’ executive director, said the centre has seen parents as young as 14 – and not just mothers, either.

“We’ve had three fathers who’ve had custody of their babies, three teenage fathers in our eight years ... and they all have to do the same thing, which is get their Grade 12. That’s part of the program, and they don’t pay a penny for child care.”

SidebardThe child-care fees include parenting classes and are paid for by the  Ministry of Children and Family Development’s Child Care Subsidy.

But while Little Ferns helps people overcome child poverty, it is facing challenges of its own.

Little Ferns receives money from the provincial Child Care Operating Fund, but Collum said it derives most of its money from fees. However, one can only charge so much before services become prohibitive. Parents can apply for the child care subsidy, but the cost of living seems to be ever increasing, she said.

The centre had to discontinue its lunch program due to provincial gaming grant money becoming more difficult to come by. Additionally, in her 31 years in the business, Collum said child care subsidy rates have only increased twice. She suggests the cost of living has increased more than that during that time.

“How does that affect Little Ferns or any other child-care centre? If we can’t ask more money from the parents for fees, because they can’t afford it, we can’t pay staff better and we can’t offer any extras like the lunch program, etc.,” Collum said.

She said more money from the ministry, for such items as the subsidy program, would be beneficial.

“We can’t ask parents that don’t have money for more money, so it’s tricky,” she said.

Please click on the link to read Coalition targets solutions or  Community gives kids a place to play.



Karl Yu

About the Author: Karl Yu

After interning at Vancouver Metro free daily newspaper, I joined Black Press in 2010.
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