Child care delivery model changing

Sam Odrowski

After a review of its current service delivery, the Rainy River District Social Services Administration Board is changing to a new model at its child care centres slated to open this fall.
The local DSSAB’s board of directors reviewed its current delivery of services and found the “direct delivery model” would be its best option moving forward.
One of the key changes to the delivery of services is that parents who don’t need to have their child in day care every day no longer will have to pay for the days that their child doesn’t attend.
“We know there’s parents who can’t do day care because maybe they’re working one week on and one week off but have to pay for that vacant week,” said DSSAB CEO Dan McCormick.
“When you look at somebody on a lower income trying to maintain employment, that becomes very difficult,” he remarked.
“So the question is can we lower fees, raise wages for the workers to what’s reasonable, and reduce some of these barriers for parents?”
The direct delivery model also will increase efficiency by consolidating all of the day cares’ bookkeeping and parent fees, as well as having centralized procurement.
“We thought there’s an opportunity to do more global buying–basically, purchasing a larger bulk to get better pricing,” McCormick said.
“We already have very big buying power though the DSSAB so we’re hoping to be able to extend that into this program, as well.”
When looking at supervision and oversight, the local DSSAB also will be able to react quicker if they need to change hours of operations or make other accommodations to suit parents’ needs.
The local DSSAB will begin hiring staff for the new locations in the coming months.
McCormick noted these are quality jobs with salaries,
benefits, and pensions that are consistent with the DSSAB’s policies and agreements.
“Currently, many of the day cares don’t have benefits and don’t have pension plans, so coming into this new system hopefully entices people,” he remarked.
The other key change coming this fall is increased capacity.
After the new child-care facilities open at Rainy River High School, Donald Young School in Emo, Robert Moore in Fort Frances, and the new Catholic school under construction here in September, there will be close to 200 spaces available for infants, toddlers, and pre-school.
Additional child care centres will be built at Atikokan High School (set to open in September, 2020) and the United Native Friendship Centre here (set to open in December, 2020) to create a combined total of 274 spaces.
The total investments made in child care by the local DSSAB total $15 million in conjunction with a provincial investment.
The operational costs of each facility will be passed onto the DSSAB each year through a cost-recovery model.
Current subsidies for presently-operated child care centres will be redirected to the new builds, and existing operators of child-care facilities may continue to operate without funding from the DSSAB.
“Hopefully, [the transition] will be seamless for the parents,” said McCormick.
“If you have a place now, hopefully you should have a place in the future,” he noted.