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Revisting family security in insecure times

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2011 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada
Author: 
Campaign 2000
Format: 
Report
Publication Date: 
23 Nov 2011
AVAILABILITY

Presentations from the Report Card launch:

Excerpts from the report:

Families and children still lack high quality child care.

Since the first Campaign 2000 report card was published in 1991, a national program of high-quality child care for all has been part of Campaign 2000's plan to eradicate child poverty.

Although the rapid rise in numbers of working mothers is considered to be one of the key social changes of the last century - Canada still has no societal response to the need for child care. And although some provincial/territorial governments have begun expanding public early childhood provision in recognition of the benefit provided by high quality early childhood education to children (especially those in low-income families), the terms "patchwork" and woefully inadequate still apply across Canada, just as they did in 1991. It is most regrettable that none of the 14 Canadian jurisdictions has a plan to develop high quality Early Childhood Education and Care for all.

The data show that:

  • the supply of child care still covers only a minority of families;
  • public funding is still much too limited to ensure that more than a handful of low- and modest-families have financial access;
  • indicators linked to quality tell us that many children are probably not in high quality child care environments; and
  • most mothers with young children are in the paid labour force.

Despite the increase in the number of regulated spaces (almost 500,000 between 1992 and 2008) and Canada's shrinking number of children, today the gap between the number of regulated child care spaces and the number of children 0-12 years remains at more than 3.7 million, or more than 2.8 million children with mothers in the labour force.

....

Campaign 2000, through its diverse range of partner organizations across Canada, recommends:

  • A public system of high-quality early childhood education and child care services that is affordable and available to all children (0-12 years).
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