By Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

Minister Larivee visits Lethbridge to talk next steps for provincial Child Care pilot

Aug 29, 2017 | 3:12 PM

LETHBRIDGE – Children’s Services Minister Danielle Larivee was in Lethbridge today (Aug. 29) talking to local early learning and child care advocates about the future of child care in Alberta.

Specifically, they were discussing what the next steps of the Early Learning and Child Care Centre pilot program should be. Premier Rachel Notley originally announced the three-year-long program back on April 6.

The Opokaa’sin Child Care Centre in Lethbridge was a part of the 22 locations participating in the pilot, receiving 53 spaces at the time. It’s the only centre south of Calgary to receive funding as part of the pilot.

Larivee says the meeting today was with a combination of child care providers, community advocates and parents to talk about what child care could look like for Alberta and in the Lethbridge region moving forward.

“Centres provide child care for $25/day, but also have to implement a curriculum, collaborate with the community and look at access for the communities as well,” said Larivee.

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She says they view the pilot as just the start of the ultimate goal of moving to universal access to quality, affordable child care across the province.

They will be aggressively mining the pilots for important data as they move along, and will take that data and apply to child care across the board. Larivee says some of the themes of discussion are similar across Alberta.

“The need to look at early learning as early learning and not just babysitting. We know a lot about brain development, we know this is a peak time for these children and they need to have those quality services so they can reach they’re potential,” said Larivee, adding a lot of emphasis is on the importance of making sure there are quality providers for those services.

In terms of a more local issue, Larivee says there certainly seems to be a challenge in terms of making sure there is access for children who have diverse needs.

“We certainly heard that, and we will take it back and look at what we can do to increase inclusion for children in the region,” said Larivee.

“I think Lethbridge continues to be a growing area, and in the growing areas of our province there continues to be a challenge to have adequate spaces for child care. Thankfully the pilot centre here was able to add some more spaces, but we are aware that space creation is a need here as well,” said Larivee, who finished by saying they will continue to work towards that.

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