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ST. CATHARINES - Finding care for her children just got a lot harder for at least one local mom.
With a semester of school ahead of her, 30-year-old Amanda - who didn't want her surname used - said she's at a loss to find care for her infant daughter. She said she has been receiving it from Niagara Region but is been unable to get it now. And her April lessons about to begin.
She's got no beef with the Region's workers - they've been a great help, she said - but "it certainly makes everything a bit harder," she said. "I'm not sure what's going to happen."
Amanda, who is studying social work at McMaster University, is one of many caught in a painful child-care pinch at the Region that has seen hundreds put on a waiting list as the system grapples with escalating demand, rising costs and not enough cash to go around.
Children's services director Kathryn O'Hagan-Todd said the Region has implemented waiting lists for everyone seeking child care subsidies except those who work.
That means waits of around three months for a care space to open up for parents in school, like Amanda, or for those without work and on the hunt for a job.
Even for those who are working, she said, it's taking eight to 10 weeks.
The lists were put in place Jan. 15, she said.
"It's been building for a couple of years," she said, crediting the economic downturn with increased demand for fully-subsidized child care.
"We know it's creating hardship for people, but we really are in a place where we have high demand and limited funds."
O'Hagan-Todd said the Region gets about $20 million per year for child care services. But that's a fixed amount and it hasn't gone up since 2005 when, she said, the Region got funding for the Best Start program.
She figured the Region needs another $1.2 million - about 350 child-care spaces worth of cash - to meet the demand.
O'Hagan-Todd said working families get priority because the Region is required by the province to provide them child care. But they're also where the bulk of the demand comes from.
But Amanda said without the care, she might have to defer her studies until September. She said she doesn't have much to fall back on and finding a reliable babysitter can be costly and difficult.
O'Hagan-Todd said the Region is hoping the province comes through with some extra child-care cash and said the recent budget raised expectations of a little help.
Pelham Coun. Brian Baty, co-chair of regional council's public health and social services committee, said the crunch comes with more child care workers flocking to better-paying jobs at school boards to provide full-day kindergarten.
He said demand is especially high for care for toddlers. Caring for them, he said, costs more and takes more staff than looking after kids ages four and five.
"They're caught in a funding strap," Baty said. "It's a very, very difficult situation for, I think, all of the people."
There's not much council can do to help, he said, except pushing senior levels of government for a little more financial help.
He figured the subject could come up this month at Niagara Week, when the Region takes its issues to Queen's Park for meetings with government leaders.
-reprinted from the Standard