Ron Brown went from being the token male on the board of a Langruth, Man., child-care centre to running the system of five centres 14 years later.
As one of two men among 50 participants at a recent rural child-care conference in Saskatoon, he said men tend to avoid the field because of the low wages and the stigma of working with young children in a women’s job ghetto.
He was a school principal when he joined the board, but gradually became involved in the operation of the multi-centre network that came to be a model for affordable and flexible rural child care. The integrated system has just one board and one director to handle administration and avoid duplication of effort and expenses.
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Brown said flexibility is key.
He noted that one of his centres opens at 6 a.m. to take in one child whose father must be at work by 7 a.m. in a hog plant 80 kilometres away. During harvest, the centres will stay open until 9 p.m. if needed. If a farm family plans to bring its three children in so the parents can do harvest work, but then it rains, the centre anticipates the cancellation and the parents aren’t charged for the space they don’t use. The rural centre bills after the fact for space used, not in advance as most urban centres do.
But while his system uses common sense, Brown is frustrated by the rigidity of government rules for rural child care. For example, a provincial program offering nutrition for pregnant mothers may require 20 participants.
“In some rural communities there aren’t 20 moms, let alone 20 pregnant ones. An integrated hub approach let’s you organize communities so you can put 20 moms together for this program out of five towns.”
Fire drills were another example. Manitoba schools are no longer required to do fire drills, yet day-care centres must do them monthly.
He said standards for day cares tend to be based on space and physical structure rather than quality of programs. For example, the staff required is carefully laid out in a formula that rates the ages and numbers of children attending. The square feet available to the centre similarly restricts the number who can attend. But schools base their standards on course curriculums, not on teacher-to-pupil ratios or classroom space.
Sue Delanoy, who works for Communities for Children in Saskatoon, said the entire child-care system is fragmented, with different rules between provinces and varying needs among rural communities.
“Five years ago I’d go out to small communities and people would tell me they don’t have day care. They were tying their children to tables with a scarf and leaving toys around the floor while they ran to the field to do a chore.”
Delanoy said farm families do not have affordable or flexible child care, so families are coping the best they can. She said she sometimes thinks it won’t change until “you have a real extreme thing go wrong.”
The political will has to be there to make the changes to get the child care that rural families need, she added.
“People don’t want to talk about child care as economic development. A shift in values is needed to do that.”
