FRANCAIS

April 29, 2002

Manitoba has a new five-year plan for child care, which will benefit this year from increased funding of $2.35 million for improved child care worker supports and additional spaces, Tim Sale, minister of family services and housing, announced today.

The additional support means salaries can be improved for early childhood educators, more training opportunities can be provided for workers and an increased number of spaces can be funded.

"We are continuing our commitment to children and to strengthening families and building communities," said Sale. "These steps, as part of our comprehensive approach to early childhood development, will lead to healthy and successful futures for children."

Since April 2000, Manitoba has increased its investment in child day care by $16 million or 32 per cent. The total budget for the Child Day Care Program is now almost $70 million. It is forecast that by March 2003, the percentage of funded spaces will have increased by almost 19 per cent over that time span.

In February 2001, the Manitoba government released the Child Day Care Regulatory Review Committee’s "A Vision for Child Care and Development in Manitoba" for public consultation. Over 24,000 Manitobans responded, with most expressing support for the vision of an affordable, accessible, high quality, universal child care system.

In response to that vision document, the province is announcing a new five-year plan for child care. This represents the first time in Manitoba history that the government has stated its intentions with regard to child care over a multi-year time period. The plan identifies three major areas to be addressed over the next five years by the Manitoba government, in a partnership with key stakeholders and the Government of Canada: quality, accessibility and affordability.

The first year of the plan, with its continued emphasis on supporting increased salaries for child care workers, also includes:

• a public education and recruitment campaign to attract more students to the field;
• support for mandatory training for new family child care providers in their first year of operation and incentives for existing providers and child care assistants (CCA) to begin training;
• exploring incentives to encourage the increased use of licensed family child care homes for infant care;
• examining the concept of a comprehensive nursery school program for three and four-years-olds in conjunction with community funders and partners;
• freezing maximum fees parents pay as part of funded programs; and
• a review of the child care subsidy program and the non-subsidized daily fee.

It is anticipated that by the end of March 2007:

• Wages and incomes for service providers will have increased by 10 per cent.
• An additional 450 newly trained early childhood educators will have graduated.
• All licensed family child care providers will be encouraged to complete designated training.
• There will be 5,000 additional funded spaces.
• Manitoba’s existing nursery school program for three and four-year-olds will be significantly expanded and more closely linked to other early childhood development initiatives.
• Subsidy income levels and allowable deductions will be adjusted to ensure more low and middle income families are eligible for full or partial fee subsidies.
• The $2.40 non-subsidized daily fee for subsidized families will be reduced.
• More subsidies for child care will be available to support newly created spaces.

Budget 2002 builds on the success of the Child Day Care Program, as well as provides increased funding to Healthy Child Manitoba of $4.6 million or 30 per cent. This year the Manitoba government will continue its comprehensive approach to strengthening families, especially during the early years, with increased funding for early childhood development areas such as:

• Parent-Child Centred Activities will receive an additional $1.5 million in support for community coalitions to provide parenting support and children’s nutrition and literacy programming.
• The Baby First Program, which provides a three-year, home visiting service for families with newborns will see an increase of $1.4 million.
• $1.3 million is provided for the Healthy Baby prenatal program for pregnant women on lower incomes, the first such program of its kind in Canada.

Since April 2000, the Manitoba government has increased investments in early childhood development programs and services by almost $40 million. Of this amount, the Government of Canada will contribute $14.8 million in 2002-03 to support Manitoba’s children and families.

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