In Quebec, more than 30,000 children are still waiting for a spot in an early childhood education and care service (EGES), according to the latest data from the Ministry of Families. Yet, childcare services still had far too many unfilled spots in mid-September.
A survey conducted by the Association of Early Childhood Centre Managers (ACCPE) among its members in early September revealed that, of more than 400 respondents, 63.3 per cent still had vacant spaces as they began forming their groups for the start of the school year in May. Childcare centre directors point to the new registration portal, which replaced La place 0-5, as having significantly increased the time required to fill even a single space.
Vanessa Gagnon-Desjardins, head of the CPE Les p’tits Montois, in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, testifies that, from a process that used to take her less than a week, it now takes her up to two weeks.
The difference stems in part from the deadlines imposed by the ministry since the rollout of the new portal. Parents must visit the facility “within five days of the first attempt to contact them,” according to the Ministry of Families’ guidelines. They then have two days to respond. Since CPE directors can only obtain one child’s name at a time (three names if the space becomes available within 15 days), these deadlines accumulate with each new attempt to fill a space.
When asked about the issue, the ministry explained in an email that these deadlines had been put in place so that parents who work or are simply harder to reach would not be disadvantaged.
Anomalies
But these delays, put in place for the sake of fairness, exacerbate a significant problem. Indeed, “the platform raises concerns about the reliability of the data,” explains Élyse Lebeau, Executive Director of the ACCPE.
According to the ACCPE survey, 91.3 per cent of respondents saw children already registered appear on waiting lists. Children were referred even though they were registered with another daycare service, already registered at school, or even at the daycare service but at a different branch, not to mention those whose parents had already refused a place at the facility.
Some members reported having to make over 200 calls to fill just a few spots. And all these fruitless calls still require meeting response deadlines. As a result, daycare directors are wasting considerable time due to outdated information. This wasted time “prevents progress,” laments Hélène Laperrière, director of the CPE du Parc in Montreal.
For several months, childcare service directors have been calling on the government to eliminate referral anomalies. Several CPEs (early childhood centres) in the Outaouais region even sent a joint letter to their members of parliament at the start of the school year, highlighting this problem.
Lack of information
Another problem is that the system doesn’t provide principals with crucial information that would allow them to determine if the child in question matches the requirements of the available place, or even if they might be given priority. Having a sibling already enrolled in the SGEE (School Placement System) makes a child a priority. However, the administration can only learn this by contacting the parents.
Even worse, a daycare director reported a case of parents who, over the phone, explained that they couldn’t accept the offered spot because they wanted both their children to attend the same daycare. These were twins, a specific case, certainly, but a predictable one, which hadn’t been anticipated in the registration portal’s operation.
The other major problem – or rather, age-related – is that, until last September, SGEE staff couldn’t see the age of the child referred to them at the scheduled start date. They only had access to the age range, whereas the platform categorizes children with overly broad age ranges.
“If we have someone (on the waiting list) who is 17 months and 29 days old, in the contact system, they will be marked as ‘under 18 months,’ so we won’t see them.” However, explains Hélène Laperrière, babies between 16 and 18 months are “not real infants” and don’t have the same needs. Narrower age ranges would make group planning and the organization of available spaces easier.
The Ministry of Families explained in its email that these age ranges had been defined in order to prevent some children from being “disadvantaged by their date of birth”.
“Some daycare centres, to facilitate their group management, were admitting fewer children born in the spring due to the start of the school year. As a result, the order of the waiting lists wasn’t always respected, which was unfair,” explained Noémie Vanheuverzwijn, spokesperson for the ministry. This point has since been modified to better meet the needs of daycare centres.
What about the parents?
From the parents’ perspective, the situation is only slightly brighter. Many have complained to the organization “Ma place au travail” (My Place at Work) about the system’s overly imprecise rating. This rating indicates the number of children higher on a school’s waiting list. The number can range from 0 to 10, 11 to 50, 51 to 100, and even more than 200. Parents therefore have limited information to determine whether they have a chance of securing a place near their home in time for their return to work, or whether they must accept a place further away and resign themselves to making life more difficult for lack of a better option.
But parents are also partly to blame, admits Marjorie Peyric, spokesperson for Ma place au travail (My Place at Work). She explains that many parents register their children at a large number of schools, fearing they won’t get a place in time, without necessarily withdrawing their registrations later. Part of the system, to optimize its operation, would require parents to update their children’s files so as not to unnecessarily clutter the lists.
“It might be a bit unrealistic to think that all parents will update their files,” Peyric points out. Instead, she believes a process should be implemented to ensure that files are automatically kept up to date.
The Ministry of Families has assured that “an operation is underway to clear inactive applications and keep the data up to date in the Portal.”
“Parents are asked to update their files and withdraw applications that no longer interest them,” said Noémie Vanheuverzwijn. “If they do not respond, their applications will be suspended until they reactivate them.”
She added that the ministry was currently working with industry associations to “assess the Portal’s first year of operation.” This assessment should “identify the challenges encountered and consider adjustments (…) in order to reconcile the service providers’ pursuit of efficiency with the objectives of fairness and transparency for parents.”
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
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