Child Care Now is pleased to announce our new project “Quality Early Childhood Education through Policy Change”. We are embarking on this journey with community and sector partners including the Child Care Federation of Canada, the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario and our provincial chapters and advocacy affiliates.
As the federal child care system rolls out across Canada, Child Care Now and our partners recognize that the child care workforce crisis is a significant block to building the promised Canada-wide system of early learning and child care, and improving the quality of ELCC programs. The current poor compensation and working conditions experienced by early childhood educators are a result of systemic policy choices across federal and provincial jurisdictions. New policies must be created and implemented to create decent, long lasting careers in licensed child care, and to provide an inclusive and high quality system for all families and children in Canada.
Through this project, Child Care Now will work collaboratively with sector stakeholders across Canada to develop and advance policy solutions that address the recruitment and retention crisis of early childhood educators and child care workers. Child Care Now will convene a new National Early Learning and Child Care Workforce Policy Table, bringing together educators, advocates, and policy experts to create evidence-based policy recommendations grounded in community knowledge. The National ELCC Workforce Table will also provide analyses of workforce policy and programs as Canada’s child care system continues to develop.
The work of the Workforce table will be shared widely and lead into a National Symposium on the ELCC workforce scheduled for 2024. The findings of this project will be disseminated through policy briefs, research papers, and public education sessions held in partnership with provincial organizations and stakeholders. We will also support the child care advocacy community to advance these policy solutions through their own advocacy actions. We will develop a Workforce Advocacy Toolkit with accessible resources for national and community-based actions.
The child care workforce crisis is multifaceted and complex, and one-off policy interventions have not, and will not, fix the systemic issues facing the sector. Through this project, Child Care Now will champion a comprehensive, holistic policy approach that recognizes both the uniqueness of each province/territory’s context and the unifying challenges faced across Canada.
We look forward to working alongside educators, families, advocates and policymakers to champion systemic change for Canada’s ELCC workforce, and raise our voices together for quality child care.
We are pleased to introduce Rachel Vickerson as our new Policy and Project Manager who will support this work. Rachel has worked in diverse roles in the early learning and child care sector, including as interim Executive Director of the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, and as a Research Officer with the Childcare Resource and Research Unit. She can be contacted at rachel.vickerson@childcarenow.ca.
This project is made possible through funding from a private foundation and made in memory of John and Susanne Graham.