Yukon ‘What We Heard’ report released
The Yukon Government has recently completed a sector engagement and consultation to inform a review of the Child Care Act, which was first enacted in 1990, replacing the Day Care Act of 1980. The Minister of Education has committed to modernizing the Child Care Act with input from First Nations governments, the Yukon Child Care Board, stakeholders and Yukon residents. This engagement period, which was conducted between November 2023 and February 2024, is the third engagement on early learning and child care undertaken by the Yukon Government since 2018.
Parents/caregivers and the early childhood sector contributed to the review through an online survey, engagement sessions and written submissions. Overall, there were 434 online survey responses, twelve written submissions and 32 engagement sessions with First Nations governments, municipal governments, early childhood educators, early learning and child care program owners and operators, and early learning advocates.
Participants were asked their views about Yukon’s Early Learning and Child Care program’s four guiding principles: quality, affordability, accessibility and inclusion.
Notably, in the online survey for families 52 percent of respondents with children indicated they had difficulty finding child care in the last two years, and 31 percent indicated they are currently looking for child care for one or more children. Of those looking for child care, 41 percent were looking for a child care centre, 18 per cent for licensed family day care and 27 percent for a before or after school program.
In the engagement sessions with early childhood educators, owners and operators there was overwhelming support for an “early learning framework to guide educational programming in early learning and child care programs”. They also advocated for changing the references in the Child Care Act from “child care worker” to “early childhood educator”.
Other recommendations made were to create a community of practice and/or revive the child care association, and to introduce regular wage increases for early childhood educators to ensure retention.
There was support from First Nations government officials to teach their First Nations cultures in early learning and child care centres, as well as from the Francophone community to have access to services that are adapted to their linguistic and cultural needs.
This feedback from the engagement will be used to inform the drafting of the new Act.
Child Care Now applauds the Yukon Government for engaging with families and the child care sector in this process, and for making a commitment to update the Child Care Act to support high quality ECEC.
Child Care Now is also currently collaborating with ECE YT, a local community of educators who are distributing their own survey to ECEs and other staff about their working conditions.
Read the Yukon Government news release
Read the full ‘What We Heard’ report
Read more about previous child care engagements in the Yukon
Read more about Early learning child care in the Yukon