[Music]
Hi I'm Elaine Baxter-Trahair and
I'm the General Manager of Toronto Children's Services.
I'm pleased to share with you important updates about child care in Toronto.
As you know, licensed child care in this city is a vital service for many Toronto families.
It allows parents to work, go to school, or attend training programs.
It also provides children with rich learning experiences that help advance their
development through their childhood years.
Despite providing such an important service, the child care system
in Toronto is currently difficult for
many families to access. That's why we're
working closely with many community
partners, school boards and other levels
of government to improve both the
availability of the affordability of child care in Toronto.
As you may have heard, Toronto City Council has approved the City's 2017 operating budget.
Through this budget, council approved several new investments
in child care, including: 300 additional child care fee subsides, the design and
ongoing construction of 17 new child care
centers, and improved online services for families.
Children's Services will continue to fund the
child care Occupancy Grants for school boards for the remainder of 2017.
For more information about what was included
in the budget, you can visit toronto.ca/budget
A significant focus of the service plan is to improve the availability of child care in Toronto
Significant expansions are currently underway.
In 2016 over 3,200 additional licensed child care spaces
were created across Toronto, including over 800 spaces for infants and toddlers.
44 before and after school programs were
also either created or expanded, with an
additional 17 new programs for kindergarten children.
City Council also approved a substantial investment of
over $53 million to ensure that the growth continues.
This investment will help build 20 new child care centers across Toronto by 2025.
The province has also announced significant
investments by committing to creating
100,000 new spaces across Ontario.
And the federal government has committed
$500 million to child care to create a national child care
strategy and an indigenous strategy.
All of this is good news for childcare! However we know that more needs to be done.
In the fall, we released findings from an Affordability and Demand study of child care in Toronto.
The study clearly emphasized that in addition to
creating more spaces, we need to make
spaces more affordable for families. You can find out more about this study
and the findings on our website.
In response to the findings, we will be going to Council in April with a
recommended 10-year growth strategy. This strategy will propose how we can
effectively expand child care in Toronto in a more affordable way.
The strategy will also outline the required
investments from all three levels of government.
In 2015, Toronto City Council approved a new
model for funding child care in Toronto.
This new model aims to make funding more
equitable for child care operators across
the city. It also helps operators to
maintain the quality, affordability, and
professionalism of their child care programs.
After lots of planning and meetings with many of you, we launched
the new model in January of this year.
In addition to focusing on expanding and
funding the system, we have also made
strides in improving how we plan and
deliver services for children and families.
Raising the Village was launched last year. This initiative from
the Toronto Child & Family Network
brings together data and research that
will allow all of us to improve the
well-being of children and families in Toronto.
This wealth of information identifies the areas where children and
families are doing well along with areas that can be improved.
Please visit www.toronto.ca/raisingthevillage
to learn more or follow on Twitter through: @TOchildOutcomes
We are also continuing to work with child care operators to assess and support the quality of licensed
child care programs in Toronto. In 2016, a total of 739 centers were assessed.
You can find quality results for centers by visiting
www.toronto.ca/children/childcare
In addition to assessments, two professional development conferences and
152 additional professional development
sessions were provided by Children's Services and our partners last year.
Since 2014, we have seen a 20%
increase in the number of centers rated at the highest level of quality.
You may have heard about the exciting
transformation of the Ontario Early Years Child and Family Centers. Last year,
the province announced that management
of these centres would be transferred from the Province to the City.
Currently, we are working together with our
partners and the community to develop a
system that will ensure programs are
equitable, accessible and of high quality.
We continue to work together with our partners to ensure that child care
services are inclusive for all families.
In 2015, we completed a review of the Every Child Belongs model.
This review identified a number of ways to
strengthen services for children with special needs.
We have been implementing several improvements. In 2016, we made it
easier for child care providers to
request support from our Special Needs
Resource Staff by launching a new
referral system and making helpful
resources available for child care
providers through the website. We also
increase the number of behavioral
therapists and French language services
for children with special needs. Other
improvements are also happening. You can
learn more by visiting our website.
Together with our community partners, we
are continuing to help child care services respond to the cultural needs
and preferences of Toronto's indigenous
families. For example, along with the
Aboriginal Advisory and Planning Committee and our other partners, we
launched the One Dish One Spoon event.
This event brought together service providers
to build capacity to better support
Indigenous children and families.
We also launched the new Access for Indigenous families team.
This team helps connect families with fee subsidy
applications and other services and supports.
If you'd like to learn more about this new team, please contact your
local Children's Services District Office.
I hope this video has provided you with helpful updates.
There are indeed many changes happening throughout Toronto's
child and family service system. We
will continue to provide updates on our
website and through videos like this one.
We also use our social media sites to
share important information, as well as
helpful tips, resources and articles for
parents and families. You can follow us
on Facebook and Twitter to stay
up-to-date. As always, we welcome your
feedback on the services we provide. To share your feedback, please visit
toronto.ca/children/feedback
Thank you very much