I've Been Thinking...

 

If I had to choose the one thing that bothered me the most about being a funded, licensed family childcare provider it would be the difference in daily childcare fees for infants vs preschoolers. As a trained ECE II those rates, set by the province, are $30/day for infants (under two years old) and $20.80/day for preschool children (aged 2-5 including those in Kindergarten).

These rates are the same for me as they are in funded centres and I understand the reasoning for the different rates in centres due to the different staff to child ratios for infant rooms (1 to 4) and preschool rooms (1 to 8). However, in family childcare I can have a maximum of five children under six years old of which no more than three can be under two years old.

That means I could have three infants and two preschoolers, or five preschoolers and no infants, or any of the combinations in between. It also means my income from daily fees could be as much as $131.60 per day or as little as $104 per day. That min/max difference in daily fees results in a difference of nearly $600/month without any difference in the number of children I enroll or the hours/amount of work I do. I wrote about this 10 years ago – it is not a new problem – but it is still a problem,

If your employer asked you if you would prefer to be paid $2100 or $2700 for the same number of hours work, what would you say? Silly question. Yet, in order for me to keep my income at its maximum, I could not keep all the infants I enroll. If both of my preschoolers are two years old, they may stay in my preschool spaces for up to four years meaning, in that period, my infants would have no preschool spaces to move into if I was to keep only infants in my infant spaces.

Now, multiply my three infant spaces by the four years it could take for my preschoolers to vacate their spaces and that means I may have to dismiss twelve families for no reason other than that their child had a birthday. Those families that may have waited nearly two years from conception until I had a space for their one year old, would now need to start their childcare search again. Some providers even state in their policies that childcare may be terminated when an infant turns two if a preschool space is not available.

I don’t do that – I choose to provide continuity of care because it benefits the child but that decision means I take a pay cut in order to provide what is considered a ‘best practice’. Luckily, not all the infants I enroll stay until they start school but I have gone as long as three years with the same group of children – all over the age of two – at a significant loss of income but some truly amazing long term relationships for all of us.

Still, I question why it has to be this way – especially now that parents pay $10/per day for either infants or preschoolers in any funded childcare facility – centre or home, trained or untrained – flat rate for parents. I used to get confused looks from parents when I told them they owed me less for childcare when their child turned two. Now they don’t even realize I took a pay cut in order to continue providing childcare for them – notably when my expenses for said care are increasing along with the child’s age.

Yes, the Province has been providing a parent fee top-up grant to funded facilities to offset the reduced rate for parents but to date this has been yet another administrative nightmare. I don’t want to rant about that right now but it has made me think that this is actually the perfect way to rectify the inconsistent income for family childcare providers.

If, in family childcare, the top-up grant for both infants and preschoolers was the same amount along with the consistent $10/day rate for parents then it would make budgeting so much easier. Having the same income for all children under six years would eliminate the income fluctuation and provide more stability for providers – a factor which may aid in the retention of family childcare providers.

The $10/day parent fee eliminates the difference between infant and preschool rates for parents. The operating grant rates are different for centres vs homes apparently due to variances in operating expenses. I believe a different rate for the FCC parent fee top-up grant could be possible too since, unlike centres, FCC staff to child ratio is not dependent on our enrollment of infants vs preschoolers.

Alternatively, our parent fee top-up grant could simply be based on the number of infants/preschoolers we are licensed for regardless of the age of the children we currently have enrolled in those spaces (providing they were not vacant spaces). That way our daily fee rate does not have to be different than centre rates but our income would also not fluctuate when our work load does not.

The Early Learning and Childcare Best Practices Manual for Family Childcare acknowledges that it is a benefit for the child to stay in the same setting with the same provider. Why then, do they set rates that discourage, even punish us, for choosing to build these relationships?

Summer 2023

 Wow! So much to write, so little time. Sad that I haven’t been writing any posts about our activities or any of our new ‘stuff’. Yes, the grant funding we’ve received through the Federal funding for childcare has been wonderful but also very time consuming. Spending money is easy but trying to balance ‘wants’ vs ‘needs’ and make the best decisions so I won’t be faced with ‘I wish we had bought that instead’ after all the money is spent – that is hard.

In the Spring when the grant funding was first announced I was already in the midst of making my summer ‘vacation’ plans for revamping the outdoor play space so those plans got a little more upscaled. I knew we had to remove the old rotted wooden pergola but we used that pergola to attach the sun shades for the summer. My south facing outdoor play space can be unbearable without shade – so my first purchase was two retractable awnings.

The old sunshades provided wonderful shade over most of the back yard but it took a whole weekend to get them up using clamps and ropes attached to the house, carport, and pergola. Once they were up, we had no view of the sky until fall when we took them down. On many cloudy or cool days we would have preferred to not have the sunshades but it was far too difficult to take them down temporarily.

This is a view of the yard after all the work we did on my ‘vacation’. You can see the framework for the new awnings but the awnings are not in use as this pic was taken in the early morning when there was little sun. I still struggle with deciding if I should say the awnings are ‘open’ when they are folded and we can see the sky and closed when they are unfolded and covering the yard or vice versa. Either way, all summer we loved to have the option of having sun or shade depending on the weather when we were playing in the yard.

I also purchased more turf tiles – we used to only have a small ‘grass’ area inside the old pergola but now it is twice the size and more open without the pergola dividing the space. We also have a new ground level deck area along the fence side that we use for the easels and other art activities (the deck tiles are easy to clean and have no spaces big enough to lose crayons and paint brushes etc.

The turf tiles are thick rubber and placed on the mulch – both help cushion minor falls which is nice for the climbing structures and the new Ninja Slackline pictured below (also notice the awning is providing shade in this pic).

This summer we finally installed the large laundry sink (on the to do list last year). It is not a new sink, just a new location, and we have always had access to both hot and cold water here but now it is much more convenient to use.

Moving along to the other side of the yard, we have a new, slightly sloped bridge across the ‘river’ in the water area and two new blue tunnels. The children like to pretend they are swimming under water when they crawl through these tunnels – I want to paint some fish inside the tunnels but haven’t done that yet.

The bilge pump and water supply has a new location now too though I actually have plans to modify this area more before next summer so this is only temporary. The water from the pump flows under the bridge and down the ‘river’. The sprinkler hangs from the awning frame above the water area so we can make it ‘rain’ when we want the water area really wet (there are holes in the tarps so water does not pool).

At the far end of the bridge is the gravel digging area – we needed the bridge higher here because the gravel area is more than a foot higher than the ground at this point. Plus, having a sloped bridge is extra fun  I chose to move all the gravel into the little covered ‘house’ we built last summer. The ‘house’ is in the corner of the yard which helps to keep the gravel contained in the area where it belongs and the roof above provides shade at all times of the day – particularly nice because some children like to sit and dig in the gravel for hours every day and I don’t want them to bake in the sun.

The picture below is the view from inside the gravel area.

I moved the talking tube (central vac pipe) from the building area where it used to be. Now it runs along the fence from the gravel area to the water area. I also added some elbows to the pipe so the children don’t look straight through the pipe when they are talking. Not that I minded them using it like a telescope, but some of them couldn’t grasp the concept of ‘talking’ into the tube when they could see through it and would get very frustrated that it didn’t work.

In the space where the gravel used to be is our new ‘music’ area. It is still not complete. In this picture there is nothing ‘new’, we have had the chimes, drums, and other noisy things for many years but now they are all together in a defined space. There are more turf tiles and our old stumps here for seating options. There are multiple different surfaces and items that can be used for experimenting with sound. Since this photo was taken I have purchased some Boomwackers and am collecting some additional ‘music’ making items to add in the future. (Donations are welcome if you have anything that may be useful here).

View of the entrance to the music area – the Virginia Creeper has grown a lot and now covers most of the back and left side of the area – naturally containing the sounds in an acoustic chamber.

The building/construction area of the yard has not been moved or rearranged but I did purchase a large resin storage shed to store the massive amount of loose parts we have accumulated. We have far too much to have all of it out at once and our little toy shed only holds small bins and could not possibly contain all our building supplies.

A tiny peek inside the shed – this is less than a quarter of what is being stored here. Kept out of the elements but still handy when we want additional options beyond what is available in the loose parts bins.