Robert Paterson's Weblog

Children on PEI - A mother speaks - videos I mean

Here April Ennis, mother of two, makes contact with us all.

What do you think about Childcare & Kindergarten on PEI?

We have set up a very easy to use and open survey here.

No service is perfect, nor do we as parents expect it to be. We do however, have a right to be heard if we have concerns about the current early childhood education system. Each of us are our children’s advocate and deserve respect.

This survey is a tool that will allow you to give your important feedback which will in turn raise the level of standards of early childhood education on PEI. This will also allow all issues regarding early childhood education to be placed on the table for discussion.

Please tell us your story so we can paint the true image of early childhood education on PEI. Together we can build a framework of concerns and offer recommendations so the PEI Government can give children the best start possible on Prince Edward Island.

For those who are not computer savvy, a PDF copy can be found on our website as well. You can then feel free to mail or fax your completed form to the contacts listed on the form. Please feel free to print it off and distribute it to anyone concerned on PEI.

We will compile all the feedback from this survey and present it to Government. We ask that you submit your feedback to us by Monday, March 31, 2008.

Social Software and the Childcare Issues

As the issues hot up around the Child Care act and now kindergarten, so has the traffic on our supporting blog. We are at 153 visits today so far after the normal drop over the weekend.

Maybe 153 visits in one day does not sound a lot to you in the big cities but the government process had had 30 in all last week.

There are 140,000 people on PEI vs say 4 million in the GTA so if this was an issue in Toronto our 153 visits today would be about 4,200.

For every one of the 164 members on Facebook there are families and friends - how many voters? A lot I think.

It's a hornets nest and its all unnecessary. If the government and the staff had a real framework for the opportunity of the Early Years, we could make such a difference.

What if the government also used these kinds of tools as well?

Trust & Politics on PEI - The Value of Disclosure

Trust is not about saying trust me - it is about acting in a trustworthy manner.

If you have not been acting in a trustworthy manner - your only hope is to offer full disclosure.

Many went to a meeting last night hoping to hear the full truth of what is behind the effort by the department to change the Child Care Facilities Act. We were hoping to be given the facts and the reasons behind the changes. We got platitudes instead.

So today our co chairs have written to the responsible official and asked her to provide us by March 7th (The deadline is theirs) with the information that any professional bureaucrat would have used at the outset to determine a change to an important act.

The text of the letter is here.

Trust & Politics on PEI

All leaders draw on Trust and Hope as their power. This is the miracle of the Obama campaign. Trust and Hope is what Roosevelt offered in dark times. It was the heart of Churchill's message in 1941. Often, this is all a leader can offer - sometimes we can only trust and hope in ourselves and in destiny.

When a leader loses that, like Lyndon Johnson or Nixon, they lose everything. No matter how able they are, no matter how clearly they see the challenges, they do not have the support to act.

So the real task of a political leader is act in such a way that Trust and Hope are not lost but sustained and grown.

You don't have to be right all the time. You don't have to be clever.  You can have secrets but you have to be straight.

What you don't want is to have this trust undermined inadvertently. This is what is happening on PEI right now.

A Mother speaks for choice

Who could say this better?

Child Care Facilities Act - Conflict of Interest Part 1

What would it be like if a inner group of your neighbors had discretion about how the building code was applied if you wanted to add a room to your house? Weird right? Today if you meet code - you can proceed. If you plan to meet code, you will be fine. If your neigbours had control - the process might never end. What if you had annoyed one of them? Could you predict anything unless of course you were on the inside of such a group? Would the regulations mean anything?

Well that is what it is like on PEI to get your self licensed or to get a day care licensed. On PEI we have such an inner group!

The regulations don't matter as much as getting the support of an inner group who have a vested interest in the status quo.

There is no good reason to have such a group. No other province has one and it should go as part of the changes to the act.

A major part of many people's concern about the proposed changes to the act is that if the new wording "May" is used in stead of "Shall" that there will be discretion to deny licenses to people who HAVE MET ALL THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE ACT. Officials have been clear. They intend to use this word change to limit the number of new places.

But it gets worse. For the decision makers who will have this discretion are not A bureaucrat working with the delegated authority of the minister but a "Board". PEI is the only province to have this layer between the people and the minister.

It is this board that will get the discretion and it is this board that already uses its discretion say in staffing. So if you are a specialist in early childhood care but come from another province or another country, your credentials are scrutinized by this body already with full discretion. This discretion in staffing and in who gets paid the government subsidy is already being used.

Where do the members come from?

The board is appointed by the minister. It has one parent - the rest are officials or leading members of the operating community. Of course recommendations as to who sits are made by the key officials to the minister. In effect the existing "in group" run this board.

No other province has such a body. In all others the minister is accountable and the issue at all times is judicial - DO YOU HAVE THE QUALIFICATIONS & DOES YOUR PLACE MEET THE REGULATIONS.

This provides a level playing field.  The core of such a system is the law. You meet the requirements of the law or you don't. What is the point of having any regulations if meeting them is not the real test. The real test on PEI is whether the inner group like you or not.

The PEI system is confusing, open to abuse and creates a conflict of interest. The board has to go.

100 members join in a week! Facebook supports advocacy for the Child Care Facilities Act

There are now 100 members of the Facebook Group advocating for a proper examination of the Child Care Facilities Act on PEI. The group was formed 6 days ago.

100 may not sound a lot if you live in Toronto or New York but there are only 140,000 people here on PEI. If the GTA is about 4 million - that would mean a group of about 3,000.

The utility of Facebook is that it enables news to move back and forth very quickly - its notification tools are very helpful.

It's early days and it is not all clear. But what is clear to me is that having a few bureaucrats do what they want is going to get hard for them.

Until now, a typical government consultation was to have what you wanted already decided and have a couple of hours with the punters - everything was decided in the back room.

Well this is just not viable anymore.

The irony is that most people who have the control jobs in the bureaucracy have no experience of social software themselves. If I was in charge of a file and I really wanted to do a good job - I would use the tools that exist and have a real debate both in person and online.

I wonder if that is possible - is the need for control too great?

Child Care Facilities Act - More Time to Talk - So What is Quality?

Thanks to the Minister who is listening and who has extended the discussion to Feb 27 and to a time when people could attend.

So now we have some more time let's see if we can expand the conversation beyond the proposed solution - to limit the growth of spaces in the hope that this will increase quality.

What would Quality be? Is is about having clean bathrooms? Is it about having qualified staff? Is it about the space and the furniture? Of course it is but let's ask ourselves what its all for - let's not get stuck only with the process.

What are the Outcomes that we all need to define Quality? Do the current reg focus on process and miss having an aim? Should not our Child Care Centres drive a result?

What kind of result do we want? It is clear now that THE OPPORTUNITY for children to be set on a trajectory for life is set between the ages of 0-6. This period of time determines the adult. More on this later. So surely quality means that each child & their parents are given the best environment possible that will optimize their development.

Quality is about setting the conditions for children to become their best at the time when the trajectories of their lives are set. How they learn - if they can learn is set then. How they behave and see the world is set. Their relationship to food and addiction is set then.

So are we in the baby sitting business or in the human development business? The OECD has an opinion about how we are doing. Here is how the OECD saw it in a report in 2004 when it reviewed PEI's Child Care & those of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and BC.

• Canada's child care system is a fragmented, money wasting patchwork of programs that provides babysitting for working parents but disregards a growing body of global research that shows educating preschool minds provides lifelong dividends there needs to be some sort of policy agreement about the services for young children to give them as high a quality as possible.

• While they came across some child care centres that were top notch, many other centres were found wanting with quality depending on the calibre of the child care director

• In many centres they found barren, poorly lit rooms with an abundance of plastic toys and games that were of doubtful learning quality - play grounds were lacking - over protective child care workers were frequently forcing their charges to sit down and not move which runs counter to children's natural instincts to be active

In my next posts - I will say a bit more about Quality and the things that we know about our kids at this age and that the stakes we face

Changes to the Child Care Facilities Act on PEI - The Issue of Spaces - The very young

We are being told that there are too many spaces chasing too many children.

80% of mothers on PEI are in the labour force - the highest in all Canada. Wages are so low on PEI that most mothers have to work to keep the family going. So access to child care is crucial to enable families and women to stay viable. Here is a comment by such a mother in the Guardian in response to the article on this issue:

"I am very offended by whosechildisitanyway and JT's remarks. (They commented that mums should stay at home)

Of course I would love to stay at home with my daughter. Unfortunately I am a single mother going to school so I do not end up working in the fast food industry for the rest of my life. It is all good to say that there is nature around that we can play in for free, but the beauty of the outdoors is not going to pay my rent or put food on the table.

I am extremely lucky to have found a daycare that my daughter loves to go to. Her teachers love to see her and she is making friends. I spent a long time on the waiting list but I feel that this daycare is worth it. I have seen some dumps that should be shut down. I do not think it is fair that they should be opened, let alone without competition.

Now before I anyone suggests I stop going to school so I can spend time with my daughter and go on EI (I've heard it all before), I have a lot more pride and hope to instill in my daughter the same work ethic. I work on the weekends and go to school during the week with the help of my family and a wonderful daycare.

And don't worry, my daughter isn't deprived of love. She wakes up everyday and goes to bed every night knowing that she is loved by many people."

There are 3,000 children on PEI under the age of 22 months. There are 72 places for these children. Looking after infants is very challenging and the ratio of staff to child is 1-3 making it hard to have a viable business at a cost that parents can afford.

If the law was changed to limit places - in effect - children under 22 months would be shut out.

Now there is an issue here that we can all see - but the narrow focus of the proposed changes to the act does not allow us to think about what to do to ensure that mothers with infants who have to work or go to school can find affordable and high quality places for their babies.

It is hard for a mother to give up her baby at this young age. She does it because she has to. What mother of a 1 year old would want then to settle for anything less than a great place with great people.

There is lots of work to be done to look at the broad issues of the act and how child care affects the Island. But as we stand, the scope of the change and the focus of the department is narrowly focused on the economics of a few owners.

Let us please look at the larger view of the workforce, children, what happens in the early years to determine a person's life and in the end how all of this affects society and our economy on PEI.