As focus and funding shifts for the district’s daycares, local schools will be taking on greater responsibility for supporting young children in their care.
Northwestern Ontario’s three social services boards are meeting with their counterpart school boards this week to discuss after-school programming that is expected to supplement full-day Kindergarten and alleviate pressure on the daycare system.
District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board CEO Bill Bradica said a four-year shift that began in January to fund used daycare spaces as opposed to licensed spaces reflects daycare provision concentrating on younger children.
“That’s something that is part of the mandate from the province. It’s becoming more and more our focus, is to provide childcare funding for children aged four and under,” Bradica said.
“There’s more of an onus on local school boards now to provide activities for children outside of school hours.”
The meetings come days after Thunder Bay administration speculated the changing formula could leave the municipally-run daycare budget $54,000 short this year (two per cent of its operating budget) without alternate revenue sources, despite waiting lists to access the city’s childcare programs.
Where funding has traditionally been based on total licensed spaces, filled space funding will make up 25 per cent of provincial daycare revenues versus 75 per cent funding for total licensed spaces in 2016.
It will shift 25 per cent per year until 2019 when 100 per cent of daycare funding will be based on the program’s actual use.
Bradica expects those changes DSSAB announced in August 2014 to increase efficiencies in families transitioning children in and out of childcare programs, adding only seven of the district’s 25 programs will experience a decrease in funding this year.
For the remainder, he contended the DSSAB is prepared to assist those providers who are able to demonstrate their willingness to focus care on pre-Kindergarten-aged children.
“They do have the ability to apply for mitigation funding,” Bradica explained.
“They would just need to provide us with a plan of how they would provide more service to the younger age categories.”
Officials from the Lakehead Public School Board were not available for comment.
