Liberal’s (BC) Platform – Child Care

From the BC Liberal Website

• We are providing child care
  subsidies for low-income families and investing in new child care
  spaces so that all parents have more options for affordable, quality
  child care.
• Minister of State for Child Care Linda Reid talks about the importance of supporting families with child care subsidies.
• We spend $300 million a year on child care, up from $212 million in 2000/01, an increase of 42 per cent.
• This
  is in addition to exploring the feasibility and costs of providing full
  day kindergarten for five-year-olds and four-year-olds by 2010, and
  3-year olds by 2012.
• Budget 2009 increases the child care
  subsidy budget by $25 million over three years helping more lower and
  middle-income families.
  

Spaces & Capital

• We’ve
  increased the number of new and existing licensed child care spaces
  supported by our child care operating funding from 45,000 in 2001 to
  over 90,000 today.
• We’ve created 6,500 new spaces – more
  than 3,000 in the last two years alone – and we support over 4,700
  licensed facilities. 
• We’ve invested over $35 million since 2001 in capital funding, with nearly $7 million invested in First Nations communities.
• In Budget 2007, we provided $12.5 million for capital funding that has resulted or will result in:
  
  • Over 2,200 new licensed spaces by 2010 (surpassing the 2000 space goal).
  • Over 100 projects in 58 communities.
  • 68
    group child care centres & 43 family child care centres, of which
    10 will create or expand neighbourhood hubs, bringing the total number
    of hubs to 32.
    
• We partnered with BC Housing
  to create more than 200 child care spaces in existing or planned social
  housing developments, eliminating some of the barriers to child care,
  employment and schooling for vulnerable families.
  

Operating Costs

• Our
  child care operating budget is $64 million for 2008/09, funding more
  than 90,000 licensed spaces – 6,000 more than in 2001.
• We’ve
  invested $40 million since 2007 in quality enhancement grants for all
  licensed child care providers who receive operating subsidies. 
• We’re
  making an annual investment of $57 million in Supported Child
  Development, which provides consultation and support for 9000 children
  with special needs and their families to allow their inclusion in child
  care settings – an increase of 35 per cent since 2005/06.
  

Subsidy

• We
  provide $150 million provincial dollars annually in child care
  subsidies that benefit almost 50,000 children and 37,000 families.
• We
  increased the income threshold for applying for subsidy from $21,000 to
  $38,000 for families with children under the age of six.
• We increased the out of school care subsidy for children aged 6-12, benefiting over 13,000 children and 10,000 families.
• We
  increased subsidy rates for kindergarten children in 2005, and then
  kept those rates in place despite the cancellation of the federal Early
  Learning & Child Care Program in 2006.
  

Recruitment and retention of Early Childhood Educators (ECEs)

• We launched a loan assistance program providing up to $2,500 toward new graduates outstanding B.C. student loans.
• We also launched an incentive grant program providing up to $5000 for ECEs to return to the sector.