July 7, 2000
SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT—Most daycare centres in Nunavut say they are getting insufficient funding — but until recently, Nunavut’s education department didn’t know it.
What’s more, the government of Nunavut doesn’t know why.
Recently the education department released an interim report based on the results of a 14-page questionnaire sent to all daycare centres in Nunavut.
The department heard back from 27 of Nunavut’s 30 licensed daycare centres.
Ninety per cent said they were operating with "insufficient funds," something Nunavut’s education department hadn’t been aware of.
"Once we received the results and tallied the data we realized there was a financial need throughout Nunavut with the daycare centres," said Jayne Dator-Freeman, the co-ordinator of early childhood education services for Nunavut’s education department. Dator-Freeman co-ordinated the survey.
She said before the survey, the education department’s officials believed there was adequate funding for daycare centres, and did not understand why the daycares weren’t getting enough money.
She said there is money available for daycare centres from a number of sources, but, for some reason, the money isn’t getting to the centres.
But some daycare operators say they are too overworked to spend time applying for grants, and are not even aware of the funding programs that are available to them.
They also say parents are confused by the subsidy programs, and that it is not clear who qualifies for subsidies and who doesn’t.
"We did find that especially students did have a hard time accessing subsidies," said Dator-Freeman.
But the problem goes beyond access to funds, as even those parents that do qualify for the subsidy are never sure how much they are going to get.
The delay can mean that daycare providers have to wait weeks before being paid, said Sandy Harding of First Steps Daycare in Iqaluit.
Evelyn Thordarson blamed the vast majority of Nunavut’s daycare problems on staff turnover. But she also said that space and a short supply of qualified daycare workers contribute to the waiting lists.
She said she did not think Iqaluit and other larger Nunavut centres such as Rankin Inlet are the only places with daycare shortages.
"If Arctic College had an early childhood education course in the communities, it would help. What ends up happening is, you get a daycare manager that has to train the staff," Thordarson said.
While the report said there are more daycare spaces than children attending daycare, Thordarson said that the problem of waiting lists is probably a result of low capacity.
While a daycare centre might be licenced to take a certain number of children, it can’t take the children in if it doesn’t have the workers.
"Our biggest problem is staff — trying to keep staff," said Barb Parker of the Inuksuk daycare.
Parker said the problems facing daycare centres in Iqaluit have been going on for years. Harding said that the GNWT already did a study on daycare.
"I find it hard to believe they’ve never heard of the problems," she said.
Because high school age parents have so many problems trying to get subsidies for daycare, there are no high school students with children in the Inuksuk daycare right now, Parker said.
The daycare that Parker operates was started by a high school student for young mothers who want to go back to school.
Dator-Freeman says there are a number of questions that the interim report brings up that will be have to be addressed in a new study expected to be completed July 30.
The final report is to include a further examination of the statistics included in the interim report, a clarification of some statistics that Dator-Freeman said don’t seem to be consistent with her department’s expectations.
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