Here are some of the problems that have surfaced.

Cost to daycare operator

It costs a lot to operate a good daycare and if it does not cost a lot, one might wonder if it is a good daycare.

The per space cost of operation exceeds in most cases $13,000 per year, with infants costing even more.

To cover these costs those who love children and want to do a good job providing daycare can get government grants and subsidies if they meet certain requirements and they can pick up income if they charge parents. Charging parents is however a difficult way to operate since many parents use daycare because they haven’t got much money and they can’t afford a high bill.

Many daycare operators make the case then that the state should fund all or nearly all of the bill, but since there are 2 million preschoolers in Canada, the cost of daycare at $13,000 per child would be over $26 billion per year. The state can’t afford it either.

Thus the dilemma.

Cost of daycare to family

Parents have to pay some fees for daycare. The state has tried to make these low several ways, the chief one by picking up much of the bill itself, and the second by permitting a child care expense deduction for some of what parents pay above that. The end of year deduction is however only $7,000 maximum, and does not necessarily help with monthly budget-balancing.

In Quebec even a $7 a day fee for a 5 day week all year costs $1820. In most provinces the fees are much higher. In fact they are so high that parents of 2 or more children often find that it costs more to put the child in daycare than for the mother to be home, or more to put the children in daycare than to hire a nanny. Daycare is a huge cost, and some economists have factored in ‘childcare’ as a key cost of raising children. The irony is that all parents have costs of raising, clothing, feeding a child but only receipted daycare is included as a ‘childcare’ cost, somewhat blurring accuracy of the tally.

Cost of daycare to government

Quebec which decided to offer heavily subsidized care at $5 a day found cost overruns so huge they had to increase the per child cost by parents to $7 and even then, the state is paying over $30 a day per child.

Sweden found the costs exorbitant too and to cover their universal plan made taxes higher and higher, now in many cases over 60% of income. The public ultimately last fall defeated the government.

A story this morning from Holland is now typical- cost of childcare rose by 113% in one year, running now 25% over budget for state-directed cares.

Cost savings at other locations

From elder care situations governments are learning that it costs less to have an elderly person at home than to put them into an institutional setting, in Tennessee for instance $20,000 at home but $50,000 in a nursing home. The state is noticing that it is wise and will save money to fund a less formal, kin-based care level to keep people out of the costlier system. It is a lesson we learned already with care of the recuperating sick across Canada, reducing hospital stay costs. Home care of the professional type can be costly but even it costs less than a hospital stay. Funding kin-based care is now underway in the UK where the frail elderly can pick their caregiver, even a relative and the state will help fund 6 million ‘carers’ at home.

It appears that the government may indeed save money if it funds care outside of daycare since daycare itself is so costly to operate.

Labor

There are several reasons daycare costs are up, not the least of which is the cost of labor. Women often found in the past the catch-22 that they wanted to keep salaries of daycare workers low so that they could still have some take-home pay for moms after paying the daycare.

But low-paid workers leave the job.

Daycare employers too found that to keep costs low and attract clients they actually preferred to only give minimum age, but that meant workers only considered the job a stop-gap till something better came along. In Alberta in 2008, many daycares are being funded adequately by government, space wise, but they can’t welcome the children anyway because they can’t find staff.

Though some daycare workers now designate themselves ‘early childhood professionals’ after a year or two of training, and want the employer and government to view their work as a respected career, to do so actually becomes highly expensive for the state.

To make the career attractive enough to retain workers, promotions and career advancement have also been suggested, each level at higher pay. However these enticements also increase the daycare bill to the client or government.

Quality of care

As parents leave their children in care of 3rd parties they demand guarantees and standards of care, so the UK and Canada are ramping up their legislation.

The UK has created a whole brochure of standards some of which have been criticized as untestable and overly vague, such as learning right from wrong. Legal experts have come to notice that parents feeling guilty about frequently leaving the child are now holding daycares and nursery schools legally responsible for nearly all outcomes. Most daycares now have to have insurance liability coverage in the millions in case some parent feels an incident of not getting the right snack or a minor fall is actionable. The insurance premiums also have to be covered as operating costs.

Regulations

The fact of regulations is to be commended. The content of them however can quickly become a problem related to cost and staffing. If room size for instance must be at least 3 square meters for child, then the urban setting daycare is going to need a large and costly area on highly priced land. The daycare has a vested interest in cutting corners to offer smaller room size, just to make ends meet.

If the regulation requires a maximum child to adult ratio that is good for the client and yet again, it means that it will cost more for a daycare to hire staff, the ‘better’ the ratios get. In Sweden costs were cut by increasing slowly the group size per adult but the levels then got dangerously high. Can one adult actually safely look after four infants? Can one adult safely look after 25 toddlers? The risk to the child’s safety are primary. The second risk of course is to the claim that the children are getting individualized attention and great education. And the third risk is if parents find out about the crowdedness, there may be lawsuits.

As soon as there are regulations there are bound to be disputes about how often inspections are made and with more inspectors we see cost escalation.

Lawsuits

There is a saying by Jerome K. Jerome “ I used to have six theories about how to raise children well. Now I have six children and no theories” The point is that children are so different that one approach does not work for all other children, and parents want the fine-tuning, the attention and adjustment to the individual. Sadly, daycares are not able to offer it and parents get angry when kids are unhappy.

Lawsuits about infrequency or inadequacy of inspections are already appearing.

Recent lawsuits suggest some parents are particularly hard to please, angry at daycares for several reasons, from lack of differentiated diet for those of different religions to damaging the child’s ‘self-esteem’ when another toddler is aggressive to one’s own. However misguided such parenting styles are, the voices of those who are hard to please are becoming louder. Professor David Anaderegg has written “Worried All the Time: Overparenting in an Age of Anxiety” observing the lawsuit trend.

The spectre looms of groups of such parents banding together launching a group action against whoever has the biggest pockets, in this case government itself, as was done with residential school lawsuits. Setting up government as ultimately responsible for the care of every toddler in the nation, the state’s balance sheet depending on caregivers who are overworked and underpaid is a dangerous recipe.

Health needs of kids unmet at daycare

When a daycare is open to the public, the theory of universal welcome is great on paper but not all kids actually can thrive there without special accommodation. Special needs kids, deaf kids, kids who use wheelchairs or autistic kids may be denied entry just because the facility can’t give what they need. There we have a catch-22. To provide the special care would cost exorbitantly to the state and yet to keep them out violates their human rights. Parents who want to provide the care at home find they are not funded either.

Some kids’ needs are not so evident and yet those with multiple allergies or frequently ill are often also not able to attend daycare because of the high exposure to germs. Their parents are not able to use the daycare options and they are unhappy at being denied funding too.

The scheduling concerns

The 9 to 5 daycare did not work because parents needed to drop the child off earlier. The 6AM start did not work completely either because some parents could not get back by closing. A Quebec court recently had to rule on a case where parents were unhappy with extra fees when they picked up the child after 4PM but the judge ruled they had to pay.

There again we have a catch 22. If you have the daycare open long enough for parents to drop off the child, earn a full day and come back, the child’s “workday” is longer than that of the parents, and so is the workday of the daycare worker. The daycare has to either hire two shifts of workers at high cost of operation, or only be open fewer hours.

To address this some daycares have moved to the 24 hour shift, also to accommodate parents who work evenings or weekends or long shifts. The cost of such operations however is huge.

Meanwhile research has started to come in that long times spent at daycare have a much different effect on children than short hours. The drop-in type of daycare seems to actually give kids some fun activities, socialization and positive results. However long periods away from home, long periods fending for oneself in a large group, have been linked to behavior problems. What is now being dubbed ‘long daycare’ being care for over 30 hours a week, is not good for most kids. The issue then surfaces of the dilemma between convenience for parents, cost of operation and what is good for kids.

Full-time versus part-time spots

The formula for funding daycare by government focuses on ‘spaces’ with money flowing to a daycare location for a full-time experience per child. The daycare actually by this formula would get funded even if the spot was empty, which was handy for them. In fact many daycares so have vacancies, which is money the state spends without a client.. But at most centres the state does fund, there are waitlists. However not all are equal on the list. Those who want only drop-in or part-time care go to the bottom.

To get the most parent fees, daycares prefer full-time clients not part-time and certainly not drop-in. So daycares turndown those who did not use the service full-time, even though this does not match the needs or preferences of many parents.

And because of the health requirement that a daycare not accept a child with a cough, running nose, fever, or unexplained rash, nearly all kids are at several times a year not able to attend the daycare, yet the daycare would lose money if it did not charge them anyway, since it could not suddenly get in a new customer – so parents pay for a service without getting it.

This angers parents and what was more irritating even was that parents who earned and had a suddenly sick child had to use other options, usually at great cost. To stay home with the child may cost money- salary loss – and to hire a sitter would incur a bill for care in addition to the daycare bill that day. To get grandma to come over might work emotionally but often the state had also pressured grandma to be earning so she was not available. Many parents felt very irritated at the dilemmas.

The formula to fund the daycare not the child seemed seriously flawed.

Location concerns

Rural parents have found additional problems with the dream of universal daycare.

If they live on a farm and both parents are needed to labor there, driving the kids into town daycare and back each day, regardless of weather, so the parents can drive back, work and then go get the kids again is exhausting and inefficient. Rural parents find that having a daycare somewhere in the area is not really very useful because what they really need is someone to help take care of the kids right at the farm.

These issues have not been resolved.

Work style and needs

Meanwhile it is becoming evident that parents not only do irregular job shifts but they often earn from nonstandard locations, from airports, buses, taxis, and even from home. With the Internet, telecommuting and home-based offices, the assumption of the early daycare dream that all parents were earning away from home is seriously flawed. Many parents earn from home and they don’t need daycare per se but they do deserve funding for care of their child once in a while.

The cost-ineffectiveness of universal ‘access’

As daycare operators realized that the state could not afford a daycare space per child, and as they still wanted to lobby for the state to fund those who use daycare, they fell upon an argument they felt might work better. Not universal daycare but universal ‘access’ to daycare.

In that way though only daycare kids got money and those outside daycare were excluded, they could argue this was not favoritism because everyone could have had the chance and only some availed themselves of the opportunity.

The problem with this argument is becoming evident however. Setting up a daycare ‘spot’ so a person can have the choice or ‘access’ would suggest a spot waiting for every single child. The cost of this is not only high but inefficient, funding where the child is not. It has been paralleled to funding ‘access’ to a restaurant chair for every child in the nation at any time of day.

More efficient, many are now saying, is to fund the child where the child is. Fund the child not the daycare.

Parents taking back control

We hear of the ‘nanny state’ which is trying to reassure parents by taking care of the child without completely depending on the caregiver. We have them now depending partly on technology. Every high chair has to have two safety belts. Every infant car seat is strapped tightly at least two ways to the car base and we have legislated helmets for bicycles and possibly for sledding, no smoking for daycares and no peanut policies so parents feel that if the caregiver looks away, technology and rules themselves will protect the child. But that same mood to super insulate the child has had a backlash also.

Books are now being written about the child’s freedom to explore, the value of unassigned time, the value of exposure to nature and of learning from the odd fall and bump about balance and mobility.

Parents have been noticing that however cute the daycare is with lots of play areas, sand table, play house, books, centres, it would be nice to be there for maybe an hour or two but to be there 8 -10 hours every single day for five days straight might be repetitive, boring and claustrophic. Parents have started to wonder if these windowless facilities which come so highly promoted actually are serving the child well.

Other options are speaking up

Parents who use daycare are not all pleased with current funding that goes only to one type of daycare. An Ontario association of private daycares has spoken against Bill C 303 for excluding very good daycares that happen to be mom and pop independent operations.

The Quebec Minister of children’s services has finally agreed to have her government fund the two types of daycare – the not for profits and the independents, calming the waters somewhat. But those who don’t use daycare at all are angry now also.

Two groups, one in Quebec and one in Ontario are speaking up that the Best Start, Head Start and community drop in parenting resource centres don’t get nearly the funding daycares get and they should

Parents who use nanny care want their option valued and deductible and though the Supreme Court said no in the Symes case, the Women’s Court said yes.

Grandparents who are tending the children are also noticing that the get no tax breaks for their work, often have salary loss and may even pay pension penalty if they happen to be paid. They too wonder why care of children at their house is not as supported by the state as is daycare.

Other nations are using creative solutions

In the end, most of the western world is facing these same dilemmas as the dream of universal daycare was becoming a troubling vision and sometimes a nightmare.

The other solutions have included funding all children, daycare or not with a universal benefit as in Sweden, income splitting to value care at home as in the US and France, universal birth bonuses as in Australia , increased maternity benefits to two to four years as in Czechoslovakia, and pension benefits for care itself as in Italy.

Conclusion:

Daycare is not the panacea some thought it would be. It works for some people, but not all and not even a majority. There has to be accommodation for the others.

by Beverley Smith
Children’s rights activist Calgary
bevgsmith@alumni.ucalgary.ca