Roos – neighbourhood childcare

We can look at neighbourhoods and the children who live in those neighbourhoods by sort of characteristics, in other words, what percentage of kids who live in different neighbourhoods are at risk? Or, what percentage of kids who live in different neighbourhoods are taken into care over a one-year period, two-year period, three-year period? Or, family are offered protection? Because these are neighbourhoods where one would expect the province, the city, to be organizing themselves in a way to prevent some of these bad outcomes for kids happening. One of the areas which we looked at, again because we had the data, was to. . . where do the at-risk kids live?  

One of the things we looked at was in these neighbourhoods where we know we have a very high percentage of kids living in these neighbourhoods who are at risk because they have a teen mother, because the family’s living in poverty, because children are being taken into care and protection – what percentage of children living in these areas, well, what is the rate at which we have day care spaces available to children in these areas. And much to our surprise at first, was in the highest risk neighbourhoods they don’t have any more day care spaces than they have in middle-class areas  or in much lower-risk neighbourhoods. We started talking to the day care program and they were, in some sense, very aware of this and are taking some steps to change it. Because the way in which, what the program is designed for is for working mothers. In the at-risk communities you don’t have a lot of working mothers. 

The day care program is also designed for an organized community effort to find the space, to hire the teachers, to form a board, and then the province will step in and provide the subsidies. Well in communities where you’ve got at-risk children these are not the organizational skills which you typically find. So, it’s a program which is terrific for what it’s designed for but it’s not serving well the needs of Manitoba children or. . . I think it becomes a very obvious kind of policy change that needs to be made. And part of the commitment to putting a day care when new schools are built, to removing some of the fees which are charged now for children in income-assistance families – they‘re beginning to take steps towards it. But one of the characteristics of research is you’re able to take a look at how is the system actually working. That it may have been designed for one thing but not working very well in other areas and I’m been very impressed with how when you point this out people can see something needs to be done to change it.