“We overinvest in remedial action down the line when kids reach their teen years and underinvest in their early years when their behaviour, their comportment, their learning can really be set for the rest of their lives,” Nigel Fisher, head of UNICEF Canada, commenting on a 2008 UNICEF report ranking Canada last in spending on early learning of 25 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Disheartening news, surely, for parents, educators, anyone who works in childcare and anyone who cares about children, to know that your governments don’t value what you are doing.
The Innocenti Research Centre to Support UNICEF Advocacy for Children, was not much more reassuring. It’s Report Card 2007 ranked Canada 12th overall in a survey of 21 countries, mostly European, but including the United States.
Not very reassuring for our young people, their parents, and all Canadians.
The report said, “The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children — their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued and included in the families and societies into which they are born.”
Canada has no standard government policies at any level for services, support and education for children and their parents. Parents raising young children now have less time at home, may work harder to keep up their income or have less income, and have increasing housing and other costs. Many organizations and individuals develop programs, scrounge for grants to keep going, fundraise, and often see good results in their own sector. Still, co-ordinated, well-thought-out and sustainable policies are lacking. Political leaders do not seem to consider this an important issue and seem eager to put off the entire responsibility for child care to anyone but themselves.
The Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) is a focused project to address family issues and offer realistic ways to implement plans. The partnership, which is based at the University of British Columbia, is headed by Dr. Paul Kershaw, HELP scholar, Social Care, Citizenship & the Determinants of Health, and Lynell Anderson, CGA and senior researcher.
They have studied how other countries are able to provide excellent support for families in ways that use tax money effectively and contribute to the good of everyone in society.
The practical solution proposed by HELP is A New Deal for Families. It is centred on three core policy changes in a fact sheet published in 2011.
1. New Mom and new Dad benefits will ensure that all parents, including the self-employed, have the time and resources to be at home with their newborns, at least until the children are 18-months-old.
2. Thereafter, $10 a day child care services will ensure that parents can afford enough employment time to manage the rising cost of housing and stalled household incomes.
3. These will be supported by flex-time for employees and employers to remedy workplace standards that too often make it standard practice to ignore the family.
The fact sheet goes on to explain how these changes will work. The new parents’ benefit would be available to all households, meaning an after-tax income increase for parents who currently do not qualify for leave. The minimum benefit would be $440 weekly, enough to eradicate child and family poverty for this age group.
Child care fees would be reduced to $10 per day (full-time) and $7 per day (part-time), making it free for families earning less than $40,000 per year. Quality services would be ensured by providing funding and training for caregivers who will be paid pay equity wages.
Wouldn’t it be good to see this, or something like this, happen?
cara@vernonmorningstar.com
