In 1990 the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada said farm families were not getting the child care they wanted or needed.
A survey the group had done found families needed a seasonal child minder service that had flexible hours ,especially during the peak seeding to harvest seasons, and that brought a caregiver into the farm home rather than transporting the children to town.
The golden age for rural child care came in the early 1990s as various governments committed money. Alberta allocated $75,000 for pilot projects for rural child care. The federal government promised a national policy for child care with money
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behind it.
What has happened since then? Government cuts starved the few pilot projects that attempted child care centres or registries of rural caregivers. The National Rural Child Care Coalition of six groups is in limbo.
The coalition and many of its founding groups lost money in Ottawa’s cuts and must rely on short-term project funds. Barb Gibson, chair of the coalition, said an Ontario women’s group picked up part of its work by getting money for a booklet on how to assess child-care needs and set up a centre or family day home. The next phase, however, failed to get funding approval from the Canadian Agriculture Safety Program.
So the average farm family falls back on one of two solutions, Gibson said.
Children often taken along
“You take the kids with you when you work at farm chores or if you have a kind relative” or neighbor, she might babysit the kids.
Gibson said the first solution may lead to a tragic farm accident. And the second is also uncertain following the Saskatchewan government’s insistence that babysitters be paid minimum wage. People who relied on barter such as milk for babysitting hours are scared their arrangements may be deemed unlawful, said Gibson. And using a town’s day care is also less feasible because these centres need their monthly fee to be paid on time, an option that can hurt a farm family’s cash flow.
In Saskatchewan the provincial government will fund initiatives in the area. Outlook was the first off the mark setting up a registry in 1996 to match families needing child care with caregivers. Other projects are proposed for Assiniboia and Redvers. For the past year Moosomin has been running a licensed day care that offers special arrangements and extended hours during seeding and harvest. However, no one called last year for the service, said board member and parent Joan Windrim.
Tough row to hoe
She said the project which got funding for two years was “a long time getting off the ground.” The Play Fair day care is set up in a house across the street from the high school. It must undergo annual fire, boiler and health inspections and follow strict ratios of staff to children.
The only other option is private sitters, who don’t offer the program of crafts, walks and story hour the centre can. When the funding runs out in 1998 Windrim is not sure how the centre will keep going because “parent fees alone won’t keep us.”
People’s attitudes have changed since the issue of rural child care first surfaced, said Jane Wilson, who runs a day care in Langruth, Man.
“They’re more aware of the choices.”
People are also more aware of the farm safety issue and are starting to lobby politicians because “that’s how you change things.” Her rurally based day care is working on a pilot project to gain funding to become a training centre. It has branched out by trying flexible hours and opened a nursery school in Plumas. But it is the only rural day care in the province that is attempting such changes.
Wilson sits on a committee of volunteers trying to get better child-care arrangements in the province. Also on the committee is Audrey Grier, past president of the Manitoba Women’s Institute. Grier said there isn’t a lot happening now, but MWI may tackle the child care situation.
Grier said MWI helped set up caregiver registries in a few locations in Manitoba but the concept faded.
“It’s a difficult thing to do and people have to want it.”
Besides the need for the community to drive the idea, those using child care are only there for a few years until their children grow older. There is a continual need to recruit people to support the concept.
