Deb Fletcher had originally planned to open a centre to work with high school students, but she couldn’t ignore the pleas of parents with younger children.
They wanted a day care, and on Feb. 2, 1998, the former teacher opened one in Eastend, Sask., in the building that was to be a teen centre.
“I had one child on the first day,” she said recently.
“It’s evolved from there.”
Alleykatz Children’s Centre is now licensed for 33 spaces in the town of 600, but Fletcher said the number who show up each day varies.
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“We’re really rocking today. We have school-aged children now. We have to work hard so they don’t feel like they’re in the baby room.”
As the full-time director and caregiver, Fletcher is joined by two full-time caregivers, a cook, casual help and teenagers hired for cleaning.
A decade ago the building was a good example of small town diversification, Fletcher said. Her husband ran a cappuccino bar in part of it and a potter used another part as a studio and retail space. The cappuccino bar closed three years ago as the day care became busier, but the clay art studio remains.
Fletcher ran the seven-space day care on her own for five years but was growing tired. Her husband figured out she earned $3.50 a day. She also realized that “if I broke my leg that would end the program.”
Her solution was to set up a non-profit organization with a parent advisory board, which allowed her to increase spaces. Today the centre is also used by a moms-and-tots group after hours and features a lending library of toys and books for parents to use.
Fletcher’s success encouraged two neighbouring towns to do the same.
“Once again there was that little tap on my shoulder.”
So Fletcher helped local parents organize with the two women who already offered day care in Consul, population 200, and Frontier, 300. Each town has been approved for 25 spaces.
The Frontier child-care centre, which is now located in the operator’s home with space for eight under provincial child-care regulations, expects to move this fall into the local school, where two rooms are being renovated. The Consul centre had space for eight in a church, but the group is constructing a new building.
Fletcher said both towns are undergoing economic booms and child care helps attract workers and their families. Oil and gas is the force behind Consul’s boom, while Honeybee Manufacturing, which makes farm equipment, has drawn 200 workers from southwestern Saskatchewan.
Eastend’s boom is the result of visitors to the town’s writers’ retreat in the childhood home of American writer Wallace Stegner deciding to buy homes and take advantage of the town’s small-town comfort. Fletcher joked that old-time residents are of two minds about the influx: they are glad their town won’t die, but they are not sure they like strangers in the streets.
While regulations for child care are generally good, Fletcher said there is too much red tape to struggle with while setting up the Consul and Frontier projects compared to a decade ago when she opened in Eastend. Too many departments are involved and many inspections and approvals of the space are required.
Alleykatz will provide administration for the two centres, which will each have its own parent advisory board.
Fletcher said the farming community has supported the child-care centres, but farm children can’t come as regularly as other rural kids because their parents’ land assets make them ineligible for government subsidies.
She said she is not heroic for helping establish rural day care, but it does require a person who is committed and who is “in the right place at the right time to get it going.”
