Battles required against broken child-care system

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/06/2024 (485 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One year into a new career and three kids at home with a husband on dwindling paternity leave, I got the call. All three kids had been accepted into a brand new, 100-space daycare centre run by the YMCA, just blocks from our home.

I immediately and dutifully printed and completed every shred of paperwork needed to complete the process. I was told to await information by mail, and an invitation to the grand opening.

It had been four years since we put our first child’s name on the wait list. In that time, I’d had two more babies and completed a university degree. There had never been a semblance of predictability or stability in our lives, and this seemed like the first hint of a future where we all might be able to do what was needed to be done each day.

But nothing in child care is easy or straightforward. If you’ve run this gauntlet, you already know this.

In our case, weeks passed before we learned the grand opening events had already come and gone. I politely phoned the centre to inquire why we hadn’t received an invitation.

The answer was startling. There was no funding for an inclusion support worker for my eldest, who has autism. Without the support worker, the centre did not feel my son would be safe, so it could not accept him on any terms.

When you discover your child will have a path that differs in some way from the one you thought they’d follow, it’s like entering a world where the sun shines just as brightly, but in a different colour, and everything touched by this unfamiliar light suddenly seems new and foreign.

The places where most children enter with ease have more friction for our kids, and for us. The heat thickens our skin, transforms us into advocates and warriors, imperceptibly at first, and undeniably later.

Polite inquiry is always first, because we assume the best in others, and they often hold power over us. We begin to learn the dance between etiquette and urgency.

Over time we find ourselves more heavy-footed, entering each consultation and conversation about our child clad in invisible and unbreakable armour, still attempting this impossible dance.

We’re cast as villains, snowflake parents, hopeless aspirationalists about the potential of our children to thrive.

This experience with the daycare was one of the first in what has been a long sequence of initiation events in navigating systems not designed for my son.

Baffled by the centre’s explanation, I asked more questions. Does the centre have no children with additional needs? How could this not be planned in the opening of a brand new centre? Is there no process to apply or appeal for funding? Are other children being excluded like mine?

Another piece of armour was placed upon my shoulders. Another dance step was learned.

I phoned the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, the Free Press, and the CBC. I learned that the then-Progressive Conservative government had clawed back inclusion funding for children with additional needs. I learned that my child had rights to participate in educational activities like every other child. I learned that the provincial government was denying rights to my autistic four-year-old.

In short, I abandoned the dance and headed into battle.

We ended up on the front page of the Free Press. We had our human rights complaint backed up by the commission, and, eventually, then premier Brian Pallister’s people phoned me late on a Sunday night to tell me the funding would be restored and to please, please stop going to the media.

Aid restored for special-needs kids

I’m concerned to read, in the recent Free Press series Building Blocks, Crumbling Foundation, of child-care centres that outright refuse to accept children with additional needs. Parents need to know this is a violation of their child’s rights to education and experiences commensurate with other children.

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By sounding the alarm bells, filing these claims, and amplifying our voices through the media, we throw light on how much work we are doing, how much compromise we are forced to accept, and we actually help the people trying valiantly to do the important work of nurturing and caring for our children.

Nothing in child care just takes care of itself, and this is hard work. Not every parent can advocate for their child. This is even more reason that those of us who can, must.

The work being done at the Free Press these past weeks no doubt has many parents realizing solidarity with the experiences of others.

Perhaps the time has come to dance a little less gracefully, realize our experiences are not unique, and continue to shine light on this sector and the ways in which it is broken.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca

Rebecca Chambers

Rebecca explores what it means to be a Winnipegger by layering experiences and reactions to current events upon our unique and sometimes contentious history and culture. Her column appears alternating Saturdays.

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