BRIEFing NOTES
In this briefing note, Dr. Gordon Cleveland proposes some key objectives and essential elements of Ontario’s funding and management arrangements for 2023 and beyond. Cleveland argues that Management and Funding Guidelines for early learning and child care in Ontario must keep in view the long-run objective of creating a publicly managed and predominantly not-for-profit system.
In this BRIEFing NOTE, Child Care Now’s executive director Morna Ballantyne provides commentary on the rollout of the Canada-Wide Early Learning Child Care (CWELCC) program. She points out the importance of the details of implementation for the program’s success, arguing that affordability for all, expansion of non-profit and public programs and addressing the widespread shortage of early childhood educators by raising wages and working conditions are all critical.
Following the commitment in the 2020 Fall Economic Statement to “lay out the plan to provide affordable, accessible, inclusive and high-quality child care from coast to coast to coast”, the federal budget released Monday April 19th 2021 provides a historic commitment to early learning and child care. The $27.2 billion over the next five years and commitment to build a “Canada-wide, community-based system of quality child care” represents the most significant federal financial and policy commitment to child care to date.
Paid maternity leave was first introduced in Canada in 1971. Since that time, improving it has been discussed on a regular basis. The duration of family leave benefits increased considerably when parental leave was added in 1990 and increased in 2000 but outside Quebec, improvements in other areas have not been made.
This BRIEFing NOTE updates a previous document titled Proposed changes to child care regulations - Ontario 2014. Like the previous version, this document is concerned with specific elements of child care regulations proposed by the Ontario government. These—like the 2014 proposals (which were withdrawn by the government following community objections)—would significantly affect provision of child care in Ontario.
This BRIEFing Note identifies seven common myths about child care and provides responses for each based on what we know from research, policy and practice.
This BRIEFing NOTE is about multi-age grouping (also called mixed-age or family groupings) in early childhood programs. It is written to inform the dialogue about a proposal by the Ontario government to introduce regulations for multi-age grouping models in the province. It provides details and context for the proposals, briefly reviews pertinent research literature on multi-age grouping and examines how multi-age settings are regulated in other jurisdictions. The importance of ratios, group sizes and ECE training in multi-age grouping is explored.
All provinces/territories permit unregulated child care outside the child's home up to a maximum number of children; unregulated care arrangements are legal and permitted so long as they don't exceed the maximum number of children. The legal number of children allowed in unregulated child care is specified in provincial/territorial legislation, regulation or guidelines. Some jurisdictions have additional age specifications and several allow some unregulated group (centre) programs under some circumstances, for example for a limited number of hours a day.
