Alberta recommits to $10-a-day daycare plan in mandate letter | 24CA News
The Alberta authorities is reupping its dedication to reasonably priced daycare.
In her newest mandate letter, Premier Danielle Smith directed Children and Family Services Minister Searle Turton to make $10-a-day daycare occur.
Her letter tells Turton to begin “Working with the federal government and child care providers to implement $10-per-day daycare by 2026 that promotes and incentivizes new child care spaces for both private and non-profit operators.”
In 2021, the federal and provincial governments got here to an settlement to convey $10-a-day daycare to Alberta.
The plan began offering affordability grants for baby care operators to decrease charges for all mother and father, and expanded the kid care subsidies.
Turton spent Friday touring daycare amenities to get enter from care suppliers and fogeys.
“There’s a lot of work that has to be done until we actually hit our goal of $10-a-day daycare, but I’m pretty excited,” Turton informed Global News in an interview.
“Families want to know that the daycares that they take their kids to are safe, accessible, inclusive, and I’m going to do my best to reach those targets as part of the federal agreement.”
Alberta at the moment averages $25-a-day daycare, and Turton believes that may go down by early subsequent yr.
“We’re on track to hit the $15-a-day daycare point by the spring of 2024, and we’re definitely on track to hit our $10-a-day daycare by 2026,” he defined.
“$10-a-day daycare is intrinsically important in so many families. It makes the difference, if a mom will actually come to work or not.”
One of the daycares he visited Friday was the YMCA Cantiro Child Care in Spruce Grove. It’s the place Annalise Yuzda, vp of kid care at YMCA of Northern Alberta, works.
She tells Global News she’s hopeful Turton and the United Conservative Party authorities can increase reasonably priced daycare.
“I think we can get there, we have a committed government that will want us to get there, and it’s life changing for children and families.”
She says each household deserves reasonably priced baby care and, whereas the $10-a-day program is nice, she does notice some challenges round funding.
She’d wish to see the province fund centres primarily based on that centre’s program and never a fee primarily based on provincial averages.
“Because childcare in Fort McMurray is much more expensive than let’s say childcare in Edmonton,” she defined.
“So instead of painting everyone with one brush, it would be nice to individualize and supply said funds to those programs to what it’ll actually cost to run their centre.”
Around $3 billion in public {dollars} are getting used to decrease baby care charges for Albertans.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
