Building Blocks, Crumbling Foundation

Child-care funding an endless cycle of failure

It seems no matter what governments do to try to make child care more accessible in Manitoba, wait lists continue to grow.

Battles required against broken child-care system

One year into a new career and three kids at home with a husband on dwindling paternity leave, I got the call. All three kids had been accepted into a brand new, 100-space daycare centre run by the YMCA, just blocks from our home.

I immediately and dutifully printed and completed every shred of paperwork needed to complete the process. I was told to await information by mail, and an invitation to the grand opening.

It had been four years since we put our first child’s name on the wait list. In that time, I’d had two more babies and completed a university degree. There had never been a semblance of predictability or stability in our lives, and this seemed like the first hint of a future where we all might be able to do what was needed to be done each day.

But nothing in child care is easy or straightforward. If you’ve run this gauntlet, you already know this.

Universal daycare is not a pipedream

Universal child care was never the priority when we formed government in 2016. That all changed on July 19, 2021.

Supporting our most vulnerable

It is said that you can tell a society’s values by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens.

Generally, we invoke this sentiment to talk about the citizens among us facing socio-economic suffering; the unhoused, the poor, or the addicted. People on the fringes. And as well, senior citizens. But there is another group, more vulnerable than any, whom we are constantly letting down: our children. They’re the only group writ large with neither the physical, financial or political means to advocate for or defend themselves.

Over the past week, the Free Press has published a six-part series shining a light on the many problems plaguing child care in Manitoba. Child care is a crucial public service with many facets, but no matter what angle you look at it from, things are not going well.

Even after government proudly announced $10-per-day daycare, families struggle to find skilled, affordable care. Parents with special-needs children face a never-ending, uphill battle to both obtain and retain funding so that their children can get what they need. In one harrowing example, in our first instalment of the series, two parents shared their ordeal in getting answers and accountability after their child reported being abused in a bathroom by other children.