A Crucial Link.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out there's a connection between the quality of child care and how well child-care workers are treated, but North American society doesn't seem to get it

As recently as 1998, Canada's childcare system was given a failing grade. It was described in a federal study as an under-funded mishmash of programs employing people who are grossly underpaid and dismissed as performing nothing more than traditional women's work. The report says that, while Canadians think it's important for teachers to have proper training and good wages, they don't seem to think childcare workers require similar training or deserve similar wages and working conditions.

According to Statistics Canada, early-childhood educators (child-care workers with a diploma) ranked among the 25 lowest paid professions in Canada in 1996. They had average earnings of about $19,700, just ahead of pet groomers. And, they're seldom covered by employee benefits such as sick leave and pension plans. Two years later, in 1998, the average income of full-time teachers in child-care centres was $22,717 a year, only slightly more than the national average for parking-lot attendants. In some provinces, their income put them below Canada's poverty line. Caregivers who work from their homes receive even less: about $8,400 a year on average in 1996.

But, these are the folks who work with children during their critical early years. Researchers have studied children enough to know that a baby's brain is not hardwired before birth: they understand that it is a work in progress for the first three years of life. If babies don't have a responsive and stimulating environment they won't experience healthy development. Others extend that critical period to about age six. (Recently, a group of scientists said that development continues until much later, right up to puberty, although they agreed the early years still are critical.)

Dan Offord is director of the Canadian Centre for Studies of Children at Risk in Hamilton, Ontario. He was quoted as saying in 1999 that, "Of all the things that do a child in, school difficulties dwarf everything else ... there's increasing evidence that the best place to put your resources and money is the first six years of life."

In 1999, Dr. Fraser Mustard, a medical researcher and social scientist, was calling for a new education system for preschoolers. He wanted to see the creation of what he called early-childhood-development and parenting centres. Dr. Mustard co-wrote The Early Years Study for the Ontario government in 1998. In it he proposed a network of family-resource centres that would offer child care, play-based learning for young children guided by early childhood educators and parents, toy and resource libraries, family events, nutrition programs and referral services, and prenatal and postnatal supports, as well as home visits. It would be a universal program, but it would also be able to steer the poor and vulnerable to special services they might need. He envisaged something similar to the parenting centres Toronto's public school board set up in 1981. The Toronto District School Board had 34 parenting centres in 1999, designed to teach parents about brain development and the stages of learning children go through. The centres developed with funding from a mix of government, charitable foundations, and corporations taking advantage of new tax incentives.

In July 1999, a federal government report, said three-quarters of Canadians are all for a new child-care system. They want economic supports for parents during the first three years of a child's life, the option of working part time, and economic support for parents who choose to stay home with their kids. They also want governments, communities, families, and the private sector to work together to build a system that will help parents support and raise their children, especially during the crucial early years of development.

Better child-care is an issue that's pushed its way up the priority list with employers as well as workers. For example, in September 1999, Ford Motor Company of Canada included a $10-a-day child-care subsidy in its new collective agreement with its workers. Other employers, including Ontario Hydro, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. in Montreal, and the City of Toronto, have set up daycare centres on site or nearby, and sometimes pay for some of the operating costs.

In its 1999 Throne Speech, the federal government announced its long-awaited national children's agenda. Here's what Ottawa promised in the next two to five years:

* Increased maternity and parental leave benefits;

* A federal-provincial agreement on more supports for early childhood development;

* More after-tax money in the hands of families;

* More family-friendly workplaces;

* Modernization of family law;

* A third significant investment in the National Child Benefit (for lower-income families); and,

* Strengthened learning opportunities through an expanded School Net.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien said, after the Throne Speech "... Together with the provinces, we have begun to put in place the National Children's Agenda to improve supports for families and children. I believe this work has to be accelerated. So do provincial premiers ..."

Ottawa's first "children's budget" was planned for February 2000, with hundreds of millions of dollars slated for early childhood development. But, at the same time, the Ontario government cut $25 million from its child-care budget. This meant a loss of about 3,500 child-care spaces in the province. The provincial government announced that it was squeezing welfare, low-cost housing, child care, and dozens of other programs to cut $309 million from its projected spending for 2000.

In January 2000, the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) wrote in its report State of Canada's Children: "Despite broad public support for child care, trends in the 1990s have been contrary. Child-care services have experienced erosion, fragmentation, and disparity."

The report gives plenty of examples. Since 1992, the number of regulated child-care spaces in Alberta fell by almost 5,000. Between 1995 and 1998, the Ontario government cut its spending on child care by more than $70 million. Only Quebec added new day care spots (by 100,000) and doubled its budget between 1996 and 1999. The report suggested using Quebec as a model: the province has universal, regulated, $5-a-day care for all children under the age of 13, including pre-school daycare, and before- and after-school care. The province stresses early childhood development and supports parents while they work or study. The child-care programs cost the province about $1 billion a year.

The CCSD is not alone in its criticism of child-care in Canada. In 1990, the child care research and resource unit at the University of Toronto reported that "Canada does not have a system of child care. Unlike other developed nations, Canada has not taken a proactive or even a facilitative approach to developing a system of high-quality child-care services. The current child-care system does not meet the needs of children, families, or women." Ten years later, in 2000, U of T researchers said it was depressing that what "was true at the beginning of the 1990s ... is as true today as then."

Some progress is being made. In January 2000, British Columbia became the country's second province (after Quebec) to launch a publicly funded childcare program. Starting January 2001, 19,000 places in licensed child-care facilities will be available at $7 a day. They will provide care before and after school for children from Grade 1 to the age of 12, saving parents about $1,100 per child per school year (current child-care costs average around $12 a day). The province is aiming for a publicly funded child-care system for all kids, from birth to the age of 12. The program is expected to take at least five years to fully implement.

In September 2000, the federal government agreed to provide $300 million in 2001, and $500 million within three years for a host of provincially administered programs for early-childhood development; Ottawa expects the money to go into daycare, programs to combat fetal alcohol sydrome, and parent support centres.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. In 1998, a Liberal Member of Parliament said mothers or fathers who stop working outside the home to tend their children should receive $50 a week to put them at par with working parents who get tax benefits from claiming child-care expenses. Discuss whether or not you think this is a good idea, and the problems it might create, or solve.

2. A controversial new book, The Myth of the First Three Years St. Louis-based philosopher John Burer, challenges the idea that a child's potential is pretty much derided in the first three years of life. Read the book and discuss the author's conclusions. Contrast the author's views with those of Dr. Fraser Mustard, who is considered Canada's guru of early child development, and founder of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

3. The conservative Fraser Institute disputes child poverty figures, saying a poverty rate of between 5% and 6% is a more accurate figure than the 20% some advocacy groups have calculated. If poverty is measured in terms of being deprived of basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter, the lower figure applies. But, the definition of poverty used by the media and social agencies is Statistics Canada's low-income cutoff lines. Research both sides of this debate and discuss where you think poverty begins.

4. In May 1999, the provinces boasted that they had invested $450 million in the previous year in the wellbeing of children in working-poor families in the areas of child care, health care, or increased child benefits. Find out what your province has done.

Websites

Childcare Resource and Research Unit-http://www. childcarecanada.org/

Canadian Parents Online - http://www.canadianparents.com

Canadian Centre for Studies of Children at Risk - http://www-fhs.mcmaster.ca/cscr/

Canadian Council on Social Development - http://www. cscd.ca/

The Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada - http://home.istar.ca/~ccaac/index.html

WHAT THE POLLS SAY, OR DON'T SAY

According to a 1994 Angus Reid poll, 77% of Canadians think the individual or the family rather than the government, should have the primary responsibility for child care. Another" 1998 poll found that, if it were affordable, 89% of parents would prefer home care for their children over professional daycare. When asked what is best for a young child, 90% say the family home rather than daycare (1998 Compas poll).

The federal government provides up to $10,000 in tax deductions for every pre-school child and up to $4,000 per school-age child. But stay-at-home parents cannot deduct child-- care expenses. And the government's focus has been on deficit-cutting ... leaving child care off the public agenda since the early 1990s.

Now, 82% of Canadian families want the tax system changed to make it easier for families with young children to have a parent at home. This would help out the 33% of families who already have one parent at home full-time, and the 19% of dual-income families who make their own private child-care arrangements such as using family caregivers, working from home, or staggering work hours so that one parent is always at home.

Another study has been prepared by the Toronto-based Sparrow Lake Alliance, the University of Toronto's Centre for Health Promotion and the advocacy group, Canadians Against Child Poverty. This study reports that: "With two parents' incomes needed by roughly two-thirds of Canadian families, many families are poor due to lack of access (read affordability) to high-quality child care.

"As a result, faced with the ... choice of either leaving their children indifferently cared for while they work or staying home to care for them themselves, many mothers choose the latter. This is why so many families leave social assistance and poverty when their youngest child enters school or when access to high-quality child care becomes available to them."

THE HIGH COST OF POVERTY

It's not surprising that whatever problems children have, they can be aggravated by poverty. Research shows that poor children are twice as likely as children who are not poor to be chronically ill, to do poorly in school, to be hyperactive, and to have emotional disorders. They are 3 1/2 times as likely to develop conduct disorders, which can lead to juvenile delinquency and adult criminality.

The federal government had plans in 1989 to eliminate the problem of child poverty by 2000. But a decade later, in 1999, anti-poverty advocates estimate that one Canadian child in five (a total of 1.4 million) was still living in poverty. The United Nations Human Development Index regularly ranks Canada first in the world in quality of life. However, in 1997 it placed Canada 10th on the poverty index out of 17 rich nations - ahead of the United States (17th) and Britain (15th), but still behind countries such as Italy (fifth) and Sweden (first). The poverty index combines income statistics with literacy and long-term unemployment rates.

Even the pro-business C.D. Howe Institute said provincial governments should concentrate on providing early literacy programs and school nutrition to children in disadvantaged neighbourhoods instead of increasing cash benefits to working-poor families. In a 1999 study, the Institute held Manitoba up as a model for others: the province spent $15.2 million on child care, and programs to help low-income parents to raise and feed their children in 1999. Other provinces such as Ontario and Saskatchewan increased cash supplements, with less success because their tax systems clawed back up to 91% of any additional income of some working-poor families. According to the study, governments should focus more on health care, child care, and other active programs.

In Hamilton, Ontario, McMaster University's System Linked Research Unit did some interesting research in that area too. Researchers studied what happened to 100 mothers on social assistance who received a complete range of medical and social services for themselves over two years. The women also got free access to high-quality child care for the kids who required it, and well-supervised recreation programs for all children from birth to age 18. Twenty-five percent of those mothers got off welfare, compared with only 10% of mothers who were offered no extra services or licensed quality child care. Also, only 10% of mothers on the province's Workfare program left social assistance in the same time period.

The researchers calculated that, by providing the comprehensive services, the government saved about $500,000. If the entire province provided those services to everyone who needed them, they estimated that the savings would be $12 million over two years.

THE NATIONAL CHILDREN'S AGENDA

When the provinces sat down with Ottawa in June 2000 to sort out the National Children's Agenda (NCA), they said the first thing needed was for Ottawa to restore previously slashed funding for social programs. Ottawa cut $4.2 billion from federal transfers for health, social services, and post-secondary education when the Canada Health and Social Transfer replaced the government's previous cost-sharing agreement with the provinces.

The federal government's NCA would include pre- and post-natal programs; early childhood development and learning, including childcare; and parenting programs such as drop-in centres. Those are the broad objectives, which each province will then tailor to its own needs. But, restoring money lost through the cuts was the first priority for the provinces.

FACT FILE

Research in the 1990s proved that babies need constant interaction with adults, and that cooing, cuddling, singing, baby talk, and eye contact in the first couple of years actually organize neurons in the brain in a way that is optimal to future learning, creativity, and resilience.

Almost two million Canadian children are cared for regularly by someone other than their parents.

According to child development experts, the physical health, mental health, competence, and future productivity of at least one in four' Canadian children is being compromised by psychiatric disorders, school failure, and antisocial and violent behaviour.