Family day care not a good welfare-to-work option, report says.

OTTAWA -- Family day care as a welfare-to-work strategy is not a quick fix option for women on social assistance and, at times, produces alarmingly poor child care says a recently released study published by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.

As well, efforts to use family day care as a "walk on" employment strategy for those on welfare is counterproductive because they are expensive to maintain, fail to sustain labour participation goals desired by workfare programs, and usually provide low, poverty-making wages along with little or no substantial training in the field.

When Mom Must Work: Family Day Care As A Welfare-To-Work Option, was prepared by Colin Hughes and Kerry McCuaig, and is based on a national and international review of literature pertaining to family day care, welfare and community development along with a review of both u.s. and Canadian welfare-to-work evaluations. The authors' work was also reviewed by an expert panel in child care, welfare and community economic development along with a symposium of government and community experts.

As well, the study found that those who are drawn to family day care as an employment option often do so as a result of their affection for children and a desire to stay at home with their own children. But family day care does not provide a family-sustaining income on its own and, for the most part, the more than 285,000 women employed in the area are either supplementing a spouse's wage, or supplementing social assistance.

The study also notes that as the primary source of income, family day care "is likely to be a transition from deep welfare poverty to deep-in-work poverty, which in turn may put the workfare participant's own children and the additional children she cares for "at risk."

Among its 19-recommendations and options in welfare and child care policies, is the development of family child care projects that include adequate earnings, benefits, and job security along with training programs that provide basic math and language skills, knowledge of child development and small business plus increases in welfare benefits along with indexing those benefits to inflation combined with more generous earnings exemptions to encourage and support parents.