SASKATOON — Keeping children out of farm accidents has become the focus of a group trying to institute rural child care.
“Our children’s safety is an issue whose time has come,” said Jane Wilson, executive director of the National Coalition for Rural Childcare.
“There’s no better place to raise your children than in the country. … Let’s make sure that they can make it to adulthood.”
Wilson, who runs a child-care centre in Langruth, Man., said the seven groups who formed the coalition this spring are inviting communities to join them in working toward providing “accessible, available, accountable and affordable child care for every child in Canada.”
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As part of a fund-raising and public education approach, the coalition is encouraging potential supporters to think of child care as a farm safety issue.
“Everyone’s screaming about child-care costs but farm accidents cost money, too,” Wilson said.
The coalition will be approaching implement companies and agricultural suppliers to assist in funding. Individuals can also show their support by sending letters to the coalition in Langruth.
“Flexibility must be part and parcel of any rural child-care program,” said coalition member, Karen Fyfe, women’s president of the National Farmers Union.
Busy seasons are problem
While a third of all farm women in Canada have an off-farm job, others are busy doing chores around the farm and need someone to watch their children. The seeding and harvest seasons are especially busy times.
“All farm women do the best they can,” said Wilson. “You find a neighbor or 12 year old or grandmother” to look after the children.
While some pilot projects have been funded by federal and prairie governments in recent years, none is still running. The Manitoba Women’s Institute had set up a registry of names of people offering child care in one rural area, but that project is now up to the communities to continue.
In a brochure urging farm families to participate in the registry, the MWI said provincial safety council figures show two Manitoba children die every year in farm-related accidents and 20 to 30 more require hospitalization. Most accidents are from children falling off of or being run over by farm machinery or trucks.
“Child care is a continuing problem,” said Margaret Cline, a board member of the Saskatchewan Women’s Agricultural Network, another organizational member of the coalition.
“I don’t think there’s anything in Saskatchewan. It’s something that keeps getting talked about and talked about and governments put it on the back burner.”
Cline said a list of women available to do child care on farms would be a natural step with the government’s health reform that pushes home care responsibilities back to communities.
The coalition sent a letter to federal human resources development minister Lloyd Axworthy requesting a meeting to get funding and to talk about legislating a national child-care program.
The coalition’s next meeting will be held in Ottawa in October.
The coalition includes the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada, the Canadian Farm Women’s Network, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Canadian Farm Women’s Educational Council, the NFU, SWAN and Federations des Agricoltristes du Quebec, Assocaition des Collaboratrices et Partenaires en Affairs.
