Changes will be coming and jobs will be lost at Wallaceburg’s municipally-operated day care centres.
However, Chatham-Kent council is doing what they can to make the transition a seamless one.
Council unanimously approved staff recommendations to divest the directly operated childcare centres at the Wallaceburg Early Learning Childcare Centres and at the Chatham May Court.
Approval was also unanimous for Chatham-Kent to purchase those 125 childcare spaces from external service providers in Chatham and Wallaceburg.
Wallaceburg Coun. Sheldon Parsons entered a successful motion to add a third recommendation to ensure the facilities will continue operating at the current level of service, until a third party provider is found and continues to operate at the correct level.
“It’s never easy to make a change like this, but we really had no choice,” Parsons said.
Staff said in a press release that the changes stem from a $1.4 million per year funding decrease from the provincial government.
“With these changes, we would be able to maintain the same number of childcare spaces for our community, rather than reducing the number of subsidized spaces,” stated Lucy Brown, general manager of health and family services.
Brown said in her report that the divestment of direct operations “will mean the loss of jobs for up to 18 full-time and 5 part-time highly skilled, dedicated municipal staff, many of whom have 20 – 30 years of service with Chatham-Kent.
“The closure of directly operated municipal Early Learning Childcare Centres would result in some reduction of value added services that currently occur at municipal sites unless these services could be supported through our Purchase of Service operators,” Brown said in her report.
Brown said in her report that purchasing the 125 spaces from external providers, frees up approximately $700,000 of operating funds.
“This cost differential occurs because the Municipality of Chatham-Kent compensates our highly
qualified Early Childhood Educators at the rate of $24 – $27 per hour while the licensed non-profit providers in the community compensate staff in the $15 per hour range,” Brown said in her report.
“To be very clear, there is no municipal money to be saved through this exercise; rather, this is an effort to minimize community impact associated with the funding formula reduction. The transfer from direct operation to purchase of service is purely about how to best spend provincial dollars to serve our children and families, while maintaining as much service as possible.”
Wallaceburg Coun. Jeff Wesley said there was some concern in the community that the day care centre is closing and that the day care services would be diminishing.
“This is not true,” he said, adding he was happy the additional recommendation was added to the report.
Parsons said Wesley and himself will be meeting with administration to ensure the municipal staff are taking care of properly.
The changes are set to be implemented by 2015.
