Discussion #4: The Ministry of Education and Child Care’s Inclusive Child Care Strategy Summary
The Ministry of Education and Child Care (ECC) engaged with families, child care professionals, community partners and others from 2023 to early 2024 to understand their experiences in supporting, providing and accessing affordable, high quality inclusive child care. Engagement focused on understanding the barriers and opportunities to accessing child care for children and youth with support needs, as well as others experiencing inequity.
Further development, engagement and consultation is needed, and actions will be taken to collaboratively plan this with First Nations, including Modern Treaty Nations, the First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC) and Indigenous organizations including Métis Nation BC. Further engagement with families and child care providers is also needed to more deeply inform the specific work required to move towards inclusive child care as a core service.
Three main themes emerged through engagement:
- Inequity of access to child care: Families are having difficulty finding and accessing child care that meets their unique needs. There are not enough spaces available for all families; spaces that are available are easier for some to access than others; and to secure a spot some families may have to compromise their needs, choose a lower-quality program or pay additional fees.
- Exclusion of children with support needs: Children with support needs are being excluded from child care disproportionate to their peers without support needs. Unlike the education system, child care is not a rights-based system. Child care professionals may be working with an outdated and culturally-biased understanding of inclusion and the current model of support is not meeting demand.
- Limited support for an inclusion and equity-focused workforce: The child care workforce is not well supported to deliver inclusive, culturally safe child care to families and children of all backgrounds and abilities. Barriers to accessing education and certification has resulted in a lack of child care professionals who represent the diversity of the communities they serve. Early childhood educators (ECEs) are not required to learn about inclusion and cultural safety in post-secondary programs, and they do not always have access to professional development to support building these skills.
The experiences and expertise shared through these engagements informed the development of the Inclusive Child Care (ICC) Strategy which is intended to build a foundation that:
- Embeds equity and inclusion in all aspects of child care;
- Supports providers in gaining the knowledge and skills to provide inclusive child care; and
- Meets the specific needs of children who are neurodiverse, have a disability or have other support needs.
Supported Child Development (SCD) and Aboriginal Supported Child Development (ASCD) programs are a part of the Inclusive Child Care Strategy. These programs support the inclusion of children with support needs into child care programs by offering individual planning, mentoring to child care staff on inclusive practice and, when necessary, extra staffing.
SCD and ASCD programs are funded by the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) and the Ministry of Education and Child Care (ECC) and are delivered by contracted agencies. Over the past five years, these programs have received funding increases through provincial and federal investments, providing opportunities for more children to be supported. However, the new investments are not meeting the demand as waitlists continue for SCD and ASCD programs.
MCFD is engaging with families, service providers, community partners and First Nations rights and title holders to inform the design of an effective system of services for children and youth with support needs. In alignment with a one-government approach, once MCFD engagement has concluded, the engagement findings from ECC and MCFD will be used to build on early actions to enable the full inclusion of children with support needs into child care programs.
You can view the Inclusive Child Care Strategy and Engagement Report by visiting the webpage: Inclusive Child Care resources and supports – Province of British Columbia (gov.bc.ca)
Discussion question
In order to make good use of ideas from concerned parties, the Province is asking you to consider the following questions for your review and comment.
Please use the comment box below to respond.
- Describe what belonging in child care could look like for children with support needs? What is needed to achieve this vision of belonging?
- What is needed to better support inclusive child care for children with support needs?
Low wages for ECE employees do not entice qualified professionals. It is too difficult to live off an hourly wage of $19-$22 in today’s economy. Why would someone spend money and time on education to only make $22/hour? They can make more money not going to school and choosing an other area of employment eg: server, laborer
Describe what belonging in child care could look like for children with support needs? What is needed to achieve this vision of belonging?
Belonging would look like being accepted and accompanied with open arms from the beginning of the daycare experience, to the end. It encompasses a center philosophy of relationships at the center, and is reflected on how admissions, communication and guidance are done. Belonging would look like the community understanding that beside the special needs, the child and family are excited, nervous and looking forward to accessing care as much as their “typical” peers.
Belonging looks like a modern view on neurodiversity, intersectionality, and the reality that the world is looking more “multicolored” in every aspect.
What is needed to better support inclusive child care for children with support needs?
-Societal views about children and families with disabilities could support a more compassionate approach.
-Enhanced ratio to meet all children’s needs, focus on preventative, universal strategies and staff health. With licensing requirements looking at bare minimum, many centers cannot advocate for more funding for staffing.
-Mandatory, engaging, ongoing and supportive training for ECEs that include special needs, and not make it a separate, optional “specialty”. When it is viewed as a choice or a niche to work with special needs children, centers can operate from a non inclusive stand (our center is not built for children with sn, we don’t have the training, etc)
-Increased budget to Supported Child Development so that more classrooms can children can access support funds to increase capacity, inclusion and family support.
We urgently need a respite worker. We have an autistic kid and urgently looking for fund for respite worker
Every educator should strive to create an environment where every child feels known, seen, and loved. However, this isn’t always easy. Thankfully, I believe that this last year, I created an environment for all the children in my program, including those with support needs. It was often done through language, including the educators, normalizing how everyone’s brain works differently. Another aspect that helped cultivate this culture of belonging was clear communication with the families and actively trying new strategies. I discovered that my undergraduate in psychology and personal experience with children with support needs, were a HUGE asset when it came to creating an environment for all students to thrive. It has also helped me to be a student of my students and figure out what they need to be successful. I firmly believe that a majority of the tools that we can/should be used with students with support needs should be engrained in the culture/environment of the classroom so it isn’t obvious and it actually benefits the other students as well. For example, having clear routines and expectations helps everyone or infographics about the routine.
Personally, I think that smaller ratios and class sizes are needed to better support inclusive child care for children with support needs and children in general. The class sizes are too large. This past year, we had a class of 20 children with several students whom I suspected support needs, and as the year progressed, I saw how draining it was on my staff to help meet their needs. It was just two educators, myself and my assistant educator who is relatively new to the field. I witnessed how one child, in particular, could change the entire classroom dynamic, and another child responded to the presence of this child. I also witnessed how children were impacted by the growing number of students as we started off the year with 10 and ended with 18 and their increased need for support. As I enter into a new program year with 25 students and two other educators, I am nervous to know if I can meet all the support needs that are returning and incoming. Providing finances for a one-on-one aide is also needed within these settings, preferably someone who would be willing to continue with the child through at least elementary school.
Aside from classroom sizes, there needs to be better parental support for children with support needs and education for them. I also believe there should be more professional development opportunities for educators to learn current strategies and research various conditions that require support. These opportunities should be able to be done during the school year and at times that convenient for Early Childhood Educators. Like teachers, we would greatly benefit by having ECEs and ECEAs gather together annually to learn more from one another.
Belonging would start with childcare situations accepting the reality of children in diapers until they mature enough to naturally learn toileting (to avoid all the unintended consequences of ‘training’) no matter what age. That includes children in elementary and even high school with needs for toilet assistance. Obviously, the need for thorough oversight to prevent abuse is key to this, but that needs to be in place, anyhow. The restrictions of ‘they must be toilet trained by x years’ is a serious barrier to care situations for most kids with support needs, whether developmental, neurodiverse, or delayed maturity.
Eliminating age segregation and keeping children together in ‘communities’ of children of various ages and abilities, to eliminate the ‘I’m not keeping up’ competition with classmates and daycare buddies. There are many good reasons to keep kids together as a cohort for the duration of their time in care, rather than shunting them from room to room, carer to carer ~ starting with a fundamental need to create a sense of belonging: trust and feeling known and understood by specific people (adults are not interchangeable to children, and neither are children.) Having the same kids with the same collection of adults for years enables them all to get to know each other very well, and eliminates the bumps and hurdles of new carers taking 6-8 months to get to know the kids and their unique care needs every year, while also removing the commonest source of unaddressed grief in childcare: loss of a trusted carer. This would also enable individual carers to really understand the types of support each child needs, rather than trying to throw the blanket ‘curriculum’ at them, and treating them all like zombies clinging to a rope.
1. “Belonging in childcare” for children with support needs means that children should be able to attend full time daycare under the care of their professionally trained caregivers in small groups.
Supported Children should not be turned away when their support person is away (or is away for just 15 minutes). ECE”s need to take a stand and INCLUDE and care for every child in their care.
2. Change in the current education system is required to better support inclusive childcare for children with support needs.
The philosophy of inclusion should be embedded in childcare. “Special Needs Certificate” should be made part of ECE certification and not just as an ‘add on’ . The Special Needs Curriculum should be tailored to meet the needs of neurodiverse students- a change in childcare ratio is required to qualitatively meet the needs of every. Neurodiverse children with additional support person should still be cared for by the well trained ECE, in the absence of the support person.
Removal of ECE A certification as a certificate for licensing, or increasing the ECE A curriculum to include Child Development and Best Practises. The current childcare qualifications are mediocre, resulting in mediocre care.
Review ECE and ECE A curriculum to include specifics on:
– Neurodivergence
-Attachment based care -Training (Circle of Security for caregivers)
-Language Development Strategies (Hanen Learning Language and Loving It
-Play and Development
-behaviour supports
Social Development
Socio Emotional Development
Cultural Safety and Diversity
Our family has firsthand experience of exclusion in preschool. SCD attempted to be the mediator but what can a family do when the facility operator is stuck in their traditional ways and does not accept SCD recommendations? The family has to put up with exclusion or risk losing their space and support if they leave.
Belonging will only happen when facility operators and childcare providers receive professional development on learning how to include, how to adapt, how to meet children where they are at. There is currently an extreme lack of education on anti-ableism and neurodiversity.
Belonging looks like:
– a child participating in all activities to whatever ability they can and with support
– a child learning social skills alongside peers by having many opportunities to play
– a child not told to stay home because no support is available that day
– accepting a child’s mobility needs and making an effort to make accommodations to allow that child to move around the classroom
– accepting and accommodating a child’s communication needs – a communication device is NOT a distraction to other students if you TEACH the other students what it’s for.
– presuming competence, especially in non-speaking students who understand more than they can tell you.
Funding is needed to provide professional development and support implementation.
Belonging in childcare would mean that each child has equitable access. I can’t tell you how many times I have been contacted and told that our support person cannot work, so we cannot bring our child – and then we don’t even get a refund so we are paying for care we can’t access and also having to miss work and/or take leave without pay, even though we have advocated tirelessly for access to education and childcare.
I think the funding for support needs to be tied to daycares inclusivity. It doesn’t make sense to me that SCD provides the money, but dyacres can still turn the child away and SCD’s hands are tied. I am tired of daycares no support = no access. They should be more willing to trial a child without support if the child’s SCD consultant and home team feels they are ready to try without. Especially when the current ‘issues’ are no different than any other neurotypical child, yet we have different rules.
I also don’t understand why I am ‘stuck’ in the same city, unless I want to lose the support. If support is provincial, then why do I have to go on a waitlist if I move? The funding should follow the child if you are moving within BC. Because of this, I cannot move closer to family who could actually support us because we can’t afford to lose support. And we can’t expect them to become the fulltime support.
I think the inclusive childcare needs to be imbedded more into the centres (or certain centres) to avoid trying daycares and then finding out they can’t support you and then you are left without care and having to start all over again. It should be more similar to the EA model somehow