Excerpts from the report:
As is evident to parents and care providers in the region, and has been confirmed by previous studies, child care services in Victoria are insufficient and under stress. Critical needs have prompted the Victoria Region Child Care Council (RCCC), a volunteer organization composed of community members, and its partners to develop a community child care plan that defines the goal for service improvement and expansion, and that costs this vision.
The plan represents what the RCCC and the families it advocates on behalf of want to see, namely a regional child care system that makes public funding accountable for providing high quality, affordable child care to families that require it. Further, the plan offers a measuring stick to track progress between here and there. Above all it is an advocacy tool that allows members of the Greater Victoria community to demonstrate that, by building on strengths and enhancing existing services in the region, the child care system that has long been necessary can become a reality.
The plan's authors have established cost estimates, based on Victoria specific information, that show the average public investment required per year-round, full-time child care space for 3-5 year-olds is $8,960. For comparison purposes, BC currently spends $8,078 per pupil for 10 months in the public education system and it costs $15,000 per year to fund a Canadian university space. Given that early childhood is increasingly identified as the time of life when education and care is most critical to future outcomes, this investment is 'worth it'. In fact, the plan contains the key elements &em; quality and equitable access &em; necessary to ensure that the widely-acknowledged economic benefits to costs ratio of at least 2:1 are realized on public investment.
We now know how much it will cost families and taxpayers to implement this plan.
What is not known, and what concerns the Victoria Regional Child Care Council, is the cost to children, families and taxpayers of the current lack of access to quality, affordable child care services in the Greater Victoria region.