The BC government has committed to develop and implement an early childhood educator wage grid, both in its 2021 Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement with the federal government, and in the recent mandate letter of BC’s Minister of State for Child Care.

With this commitment in mind, the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC and ECEBC are releasing a new study showing that:

1. BC has fallen behind

In terms of Canada-wide progress toward an ECE wage grid; and in terms of effective minimum ECE wages

2. To be competitive and effective, wages in BC’s promised grid now need to be at least $30–$40/hour

Depending on qualifications, experience and years of employment

Download the briefing note, or watch a ~30 minute video presentation for full details. 

THE COALITION OF CHILD CARE ADVOCATES AND EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS OF BC are very pleased that the government of British Columbia is currently undertaking a project to develop the first-ever province-wide child care facility design (and cost) standards.

These forthcoming standards are an opportunity to create conditions for ethical care and practice in support of the underlining vision, principles, and learning goals of BC’s Early Learning Framework, and to broadly ensure all children and educators can play, learn, and work in high-quality physical environments that are safe, inclusive, environmentally healthy, and climate-friendly.

Through late 2022 and early 2023 — consulting with academic experts, municipal planners, and others — we have been working to put together specific recommendations that speak to:

• Fundamentals upon which we believe the standards should be developed;
• Practice/context considerations for their effective use;
• Specific components of the standards; and
• Complementary projects we believe the province should initiate that flow from the new standards.

Download the full report here

The $10aDay campaign strives to advance our goal of an inclusive, equitable and accessible child care system in ways that reflect the values and culture of the system we are advocating for. This means we are committed to reconciliation, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As the BC and federal governments are now — finally! — beginning to implement their significant child care commitments, it is important that our advocacy works to include the diversity of BC families, children, and educators. We are committed to centring voices that have historically been excluded from our work and the broader BC women’s movement. We are taking concrete steps to include the lived experiences of families, children, and educators who identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, 2SLGBTQIA+ and persons with disabilities.

As part of this commitment, we conducted a $10aDay Supporter Survey to better understand the extent to which $10aDay supporters reflect the diversity of BC families, children, and educators, and to identify supporters' priorities for making BC's child care system more inclusive.

Download the full survey results here.

BC is at a moment of intense disruption and change, from the pandemic to the climate emergency, to the affordability and opioid crises. In response to this moment, we must seek out intersections between child care and other issues and movements, and look for actions that can simultaneously advance multiple goals.

In that spirit, we've written a policy note that identifies five key intersections between the issues of child care, the environment, and climate change, and provides 10 recommendations for concrete action by the BC government. 

Our aim is to help hasten BC’s transition to both universal child care and a clean economy in ways that improve the health and well-being of children, families, educators, and communities.

This Roadmap offers a service delivery framework aligned with the $10aDay Child Care Plan. It provides a level of policy detail required to create a universally accessible, quality system for families who choose child care for their infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children — a public system in which early childhood educators are respected professionals and child care comes to the table as a strong and equal partner with the K–12 education system.

Download the 2022 Roadmap here!

It just makes sense!

Click here to access a PDF version of this post.

On November 8, 2019, BC’s Minister of Education hosted a very significant Early Learning Summit. The Summit brought together school district leaders, teachers, and representatives from child care organizations from across BC to hear about the current research and evidence on the social and financial benefits of investing in early learning, discuss school-age child care, and listen to school district/community stories.

Click here to view a PDF version of this post.

The BC government is committed to creating 24,000 new licensed child care spaces by 2021. Consistent with $10aDay Plan recommendations, government is encouraging partnerships with public partners (school districts, municipalities) to help achieve this goal. However, government continues to rely on two expensive, risky, and unaccountable policies implemented by the previous government.

First, current capital expansion relies on inviting applications from others (non-profit, for-profit, and public sector organizations) to independently create new spaces. This reactive approach does not allow government to achieve economies of scale or cost effective investments in public infrastructure, nor does it ensure that spaces are created and maintained where the need is greatest. Even more worrisome, BC is the only province in Canada providing significant capital funds to create new child care facilities owned by for-profit businesses. Significant public funds are going into the acquisition of private assets rather than into publicly planned, owned and operated facilities. These approaches undermine government’s commitment to universal child care. The international evidence is clear. In countries with universal access to child care, the majority of services are publicly funded and delivered .

Click here to view a PDF version of this post.

The BC government has taken bold initial steps towards its commitment to universal child care by reducing parent fees, raising educator wages and education, affirming its support for Indigenous-led child care and introducing $10aDay Prototype Sites across the province. These steps are broadly supported by the 90% of British Columbians – across all ages, regions and political allegiances² – who believe that public investments in a quality, affordable child care system are important. And, almost two-thirds of parents with child care experience say current government investments are having a positive impact on their child care situation.

British Columbians also know that there is much more to do. Child care still puts a financial strain on 76% of families and 70% say a parent had to remain away from work longer after parental leave because child care was unavailable.

We are so pleased to share with you the UPDATED 2019 edition of the popular $10aDay Child Care Plan. This plan for a public system of integrated early care and learning was first launched in 2011. Developed through wide consultation across BC and based on research and evidence, the Plan is the concrete, do-able solution to BC’s child care chaos.

Popular $10aDay Plan is the template for building quality, universal child care across BC over 10 years.

Click here to access this press release in PDF format.