Child care centres feel pinch of delayed grant payments

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This article was published 12/07/2023 (834 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Early childhood educators say delays in Manitoba’s rollout of subsidies for $10-per-day programming forced them to pay overdraft fees and resulted in late mortgage and bill payments.

Child care facilities anticipated receiving special grants to cover operating costs — known as the new reduced parent fee revenue grant — between June 26 and 30.

Citing technical issues, the government informed them it was unable to process the second round of payments on the last day of June, and directors would receive funding allotments July 7 or later.

“The issue could not have come at a worse time,” said Val Smith, a licensed family child care provider based in Minnedosa. “I plan a lot more outings and experiences in the summer, and also have extra school-age children so expenses go up.”

Smith said she and her counterparts have spent recent weeks scrambling to cover costs and, when they finally obtained the money they were owed from the province, some amounts did not add up — in turn, requiring additional administrative work to prove shortfalls.

The province’s remittance slips do not break down the calculations behind lump sums.

“We shouldn’t have to advocate to receive our paycheques,” Smith said, noting initial requests about the status of payments, which were sent shortly after summer began, were met with vague assurances the department of early childhood learning was working on the matter.

Manitoba issued the first round of subsidies to coincide with families being eligible to pay a maximum of $10/day for children 12 and under to attend licensed, funded early learning and child care centres and homes, starting April 2.

At the time, the province disbursed proactive funding based on every facility’s maximum capacity.

The second round of deposits, which are for summer and early autumn operations, are supposed to be based on each centre’s enrolment April 2-29.

Small businesses operating out of family homes have been hit particularly hard by the government delays, while some payments were obtained about two weeks after the recipients anticipated them, per the Manitoba Child Care Association.

“The purpose of the grant was to ensure facilities did not lose revenue as a result of the reduced parent fees and, unfortunately, that did not happen. Facilities did lose revenue or their payments were late,” said executive director Jodie Kehl.

Kehl called the $10/day initiative “a really great thing for families,” but she said it should not come at the expense of directors being overwhelmed with stress and burdened with unpaid administrative duties.

Sector leaders are perplexed as to why the province is both distributing these grants on a quarterly basis and using April data to distribute the latest round of them if facilities have to report capacity statistics on a more frequent billing period cycle.

Assiniboine Children’s Centre in Winnipeg is currently taking care of six more young children than it was in the spring, but the province did not take that change into account.

“My summer costs have gone up quite a bit. When are they going to catch up with that?” said executive director Marilyn Valgardson, who indicated she has to do accounting and paperwork to support her request for additional dollars since the latest payment is insufficient. “It feels like it’s all being dumped on our lap.”

The province had upwards of three months to ensure its second round of payments were timely and correct, Valgardson noted.

A government spokesperson indicated payments were processed for 928 facilities July 7. Manitoba’s child care registry indicates there are 958 funded centres, nurseries and homes.

“The province recognizes the importance of issuing grant funding in a timely manner and (we) are working to improve the process to prevent further delays,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The office of Education Minister Wayne Ewasko, who oversees the child care portfolio, redirected a reporter to the department.

“Due to the government’s incompetence here, a huge number of child care centres are actually being forced to pay overdraft fees,” said MLA Adrien Sala, chairman of the NDP caucus child care committee.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie