In April, Growing Minds Child Care (GMCC) made their dilemma public. They had too little space to continue childcare services for 14 out of 17 of the children enrolled and entering the school-age care program. A meeting was held at the Heritage Centre with parents of enrolled children, church leaders, business people, the mayor, and select politicians in attendance, all seeking to understand the impact of the situation and how they could participate in finding solutions.
GMCC’s concern was not new. In past years, GMCC has been able to meet the demands of children moving from preschool to school-age care by opening two new satellite locations on Main Street. The difference, this time, was the seeming lack of further space equipped or affordably priced to meet their unique needs.
Shortly after the April meeting, several parties came forward with proposals, all of which were assessed based on licensing regulations, operational requirements, and financial viability.
In June, GMCC accepted a proposal from the owners of the space at 21 Main Street and signed a lease agreement, effective August 1, 2016. The space, recently vacated by Corolla Designs, is immediately adjacent to their existing School Age One centre at 25 Main Street. Renovations will be done to open up the wall between the two units, combining them and creating space for 15 extra children. GMCC is expecting to receive licensing in August and be able to place children at the location by the first day of school.
“This is a huge success for our families, as well as for Growing Minds,” says Rhonda Kenning, director of GMCC. “We have a strong commitment to keeping all of our children in care as demonstrated by the continued attempts to expand our centre in recent years to accommodate the need.”
Though a solution has been realized for these few, GMCC still has a lengthy waiting list of families whose children are in immediate or future need of childcare services. The GMCC board has been busy this summer researching the feasibility of long-term growth.
Two other proposals were optimistically pursued by the board, each of which would become available for daycare space within the year. With the anticipated move of the Niverville Medical Centre in early 2017, potential daycare space would become available at that time.
The owners of the building and lot at 295 Main (the old Puratone building) put forward two more options to GMCC. The existing building, now mostly empty, could be renovated to accommodate school-age children. Another option was to build a new facility on the adjoining lot, specifically dedicated to daycare and built to provincial daycare code. The building would have allowed for an additional 125 spaces and the potential for GMCC to combine all of their school-age programming in one location.
“We carefully assessed the proposals against operational requirements and financial viability, as well as provincial regulations for licensing and operational funding,” says Kenning. “Our evaluation confirmed that it is not viable, from an operational and financial perspective, to proceed with either of the proposals received. As a non-profit organization, our priority is to operate a sustainable and efficient program. Therefore, our board reached a unanimous decision that it is not in the best interests of Growing Minds to expand our centre at this time.”
Kenning suggests that a number of factors went into their decision. The main challenges, she says, were trying to meet regulations and stay within the operating funding structure laid out by the provincial government. Under these guidelines, it is difficult for GMCC to provide for the incremental growth required to meet the demands of a growing community. As well, to pursue either of these options would mean acquiring significant long-term debt due to the current unavailability and future uncertainty of any extra provincial operating funding. To the board, this was too great a risk.
“The funding constraints would have required us to potentially sustain a non-funded model and charge a very high daily fee to parents in order to offset expenses,” adds Kenning. “[This] would be burdensome for parents as well as create financial risk for GMCC if we could not fill the spaces.”
Kenning says that these were not the only reasons for GMCC’s decision, but the challenges played a significant role.
“We wanted to work together with them to open up more spaces for the community and help Growing Minds meet the huge waiting list,” says Ray Dowse, developer of 295 Main Street. “What this would also do is open up some space in the Heritage Centre for more infants. Over six months of talks, both parties threw absolutely everything on the table to try to find a way to make this work, but in the end government regulations were the number one reason this did not work, followed closely by the lack of funding.”
The GMCC board has not ruled out the possibility of future growth to meet the demand, but only if commercial space should come available that is more financially feasible. Their goal right now is to continue working proactively to meet the needs of those currently enrolled and strive to avoid ending care for those moving into the school-age program.
“Now that we have created 15 additional childcare spaces, we plan to continue communicating with the province in regards to receiving priority consideration for operational funding,” says Kenning. “While waiting for funding, we are following the recommendation of Manitoba Early Learning and Childcare to charge an increased childcare fee for the new childcare spaces in order to offset expenses.”
The GMCC board is quite aware that this increase can create an additional financial burden to families and hopes the province will respond favourably and quickly.
“Ensuring quality childcare for families is a priority of our new government,” says Shannon Martin, MLA for Morris. “Obviously we have inherited a waiting list of approximately 12,000 children and very restrictive rules and regulations left to us by the NDP. We have been working with Growing Minds to address their needs in the short term. The Government of Manitoba is developing a new early learning and childcare strategy and will continue working towards our goal of becoming the most improved province in Canada.”
Kenning says that the feedback from parents has been positive. “We have received a great deal of support from our parents, community and business partners, as well as the Hanover School Division. We were very thankful to have received proposals for childcare space… as well as support from the church community. As the growing need for childcare is an important community issue, we hope that [it] will continue to remain a priority for our business community, town council, school division, and for licensed and unlicensed providers.”
