The Little Explorers Childcare and Discovery Centre will be hit hard by Alberta Human Service’s decision to end the $7,500 Quality Enhancement Grant for accredited childcare centres across the province on April 1.
According to Craig Loewen, press secretary for the department, the grant was cut because it had achieved its goal of helping childcare centres qualify for accreditation.
Nevertheless, daycare operators are upset over the loss of the grant, which enabled them to provide better programming and additional training for staff.
“There might be a lot of established daycares in Alberta right now, but for someone who’s just starting out, this is painful,” said Nola Wallace, director of the Little Explorers Childcare Centre.
She explained that the Little Explorers are still in the accreditation process, having only been in operation for less than two years.
“That money was essential,” said Wallace, explaining that a certain standard of excellence is required for all accredited childcare programs in Alberta.
“We have what is required to be a daycare, but to be an accredited daycare, we need multicultural items, a more advanced library and more toys. Basically all of our resources need to be held to a higher standard.”
The Little Explorers Childcare and Discovery Centre is a non-profit organization, meaning that any money made is invested directly back into the daycare.
Wallace mentioned that she was grateful the government hasn’t taken away her professional development funds – funds provided by the government to give specially trained employee’s a top-up in addition to the regular pay they receive – although she fears that they too may now be in jeopardy.
“If it had affected their pay, I really don’t know what we would have done,” she said.
Although raising fees for the daycare may be one alternative to recoup the financial losses, Wallace affirms that it is not set in stone.
“Because we’re in the accreditation process, we don’t want to bail out on that. We want to keep on going, but it will make things tough.”
Despite the setback, Wallace has faith that Little Explorers will be still be able to continue moving forward without making any detrimental changes to the program.
“It’s not going to get us down, we shall overcome,” she said.