Vancouver may be one of the most livable cities on the planet, but some young families can find it tough to raise kids here. It’s not that there aren’t lots of amenities, from playgrounds and parks to community events. Some of the schools rank among the best in the country, and of course there are the acres of wilderness that open a child’s eyes to the natural splendour of the world.
But finding child care – and affordable child care, at that – can be difficult. As Aaron Hildebrandt wrote in a much-shared blog post, “The moment we became a family, the city spit us out. And there was no way around it.”
Wait-lists are long, and the spots that do become available can cost $2,000 a month. Families without friends and without resources can find themselves in a bind. Add that to the lack of affordable, family-sized housing, and some families decamp for other locales.
Debbie Roque, a marketing manager with Telus, was on maternity leave when she moved to Calgary with her husband, Curtis, and daughter, Adalyn, in September 2014.
Roque had begun joining wait-lists for child care in Vancouver when she was four months pregnant, but none had come through by the time of her move to Calgary. She wasn’t about to stop waiting, however. Vancouver was home, and when an opportunity came to move back to B.C. in August 2016, she began following up.
“Most of them said that [Adalyn] was still on the wait-list and that they had no timeline or time frame as to when she would get a space,” Roque says.
Since her daughter attended Kids & Co. – a child-care provider with locations in six provinces – in Calgary, Roque contacted its Vancouver location hoping a transfer might be possible.
“They weren’t sure if she would get a spot,” she says. “I kept hassling them, and at the beginning of June they confirmed that she would have three days a week come August 1.”
That left two days to fill, but no one would meet with her till she was in town. She contacted nannies, but those without experience charged $15 an hour and experienced caregivers wanted a full-time role.
Having family step in wasn’t ideal, so Roque tapped the pool of backup care that Telus offers its staff in partnership with Kids & Co. Finally, after six months, she obtained a full-time placement at Kids & Co. – but at a 50 per cent premium to what she had paid in Calgary.
Roque knows she got lucky, however, something Sandra Menzer, executive director with the Vancouver Society of Children’s Centres, confirms.
“We have 3,200 children on our waiting list for our centres, so it would be very rare for someone to get child care quickly,” she says.
It’s particularly difficult to find care for children the age of Roque’s two-year-old daughter, adds Pam Preston, executive director with Westcoast Child Care Resource Centre, one of the key resources mothers mentioned during interviews for this story.
“The waiting lists can be two to three years or more. Some programs have 3,000 children on their wait-lists,” she says.
Preston encourages parents not to limit their search to traditional daycare centres. Children at centres are typically in large groups (12 for infants and toddlers up to three years; 25 for children aged three to five). However, licensed and registered providers who provide care in their own homes are limited to smaller groups. By law, caregivers can look after no more than two children besides their own (sibling groups are excepted, though a sibling group of three, for example, maxes out the caregiver’s legal capacity).
None of it comes cheap, however, with Westcoast’s annual rate survey indicating a price range of between $600 and $2,125 a month for infant and toddler care. Care for older children is slightly more affordable at $550 to $1,615 a month – but in all cases the average cost is $950 to $1,450. Many centres require registration fees and deposits, which aren’t necessarily refundable.
The costs reflect the province’s tight supply of spaces. Preston notes that approximately 80 per cent of B.C. children need some kind of daycare, but there’s room for just 20 per cent of them. Approval times for new centres are a significant hurdle in expanding capacity.
In retrospect, the difficulties make Roque second-guess the timing of her move back to Vancouver.
“Looking back, if we had preplanned a little bit more, we would have come closer to [Adalyn] coming into kindergarten here to avoid some of the hassles that we had to go through.”
