Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 The morning, Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. You've tuned into the Mac city morning show. I am your host, Elliot Pierre. And as per usual, we're going to start the show off the same way we started off every day with a moment of gratitude. I know you could be doing a million other things with your time. So the fact that you spend it with us truly does mean the world to me. So thank you on that note, Tanner hit him with the intro.
Speaker 1 00:00:22 Oh, she caught me loves you're listening to the next anymore.
Speaker 0 00:00:31 All right. We are back. Okay. We got a fun one today. I've been trying to coordinate with this lady for a little while now. And so we made it happen. So I'm very excited as you guys know, I don't introduce my guests. I let them do that themselves. So on that note, can you please tell everybody at home who you are and what
Speaker 3 00:00:46 I am Janet Huffman. And I am a member of the early years coalition here in Fort McMurray. And I am coming here today. Talk about childcare and the recent announcement of the universal childcare plan that was signed between the federal government and the Alberta government on.
Speaker 0 00:01:00 Okay, so let's talk about it. So I, we were talking a little bit before the show, obviously I, haven't not, obviously not everybody knows, but I do have a child. And, um, fortunately, like we talked about, I'm able to deal with childcare because I have a great family support system here. I have a very flexible job, um, obviously, but that's not everybody's scenario and financially, and from time, there's a lot of juggling that a lot of Albertans have to deal with. So please tell me everything you have on this subject matter, because I think it's pertinent for sure.
Speaker 3 00:01:32 It is. So the, the biggest announcement that the people understand is the $10 a day childcare program. And so it's a five-year process for us to get to $10 a day. And it's, uh, it's, uh, it'll be done in Alberta. It'll be done through grants from the federal government, transferring to the Alberta government, which will allow a reduction in fees. So the first that we've heard is that by January, 2022, the typical fees that people pay for here for being Maureen across Alberta should be half of what they typically pay currently. Okay. So the current average fee for a toddler here in Fort McMurray is $1,320 a month. That's correct. So parents should pay about half of that come January. Now we don't know if that's beginning of January, end of January, because of course the agreement was just signed. So there's a lot of details that have not been released yet.
Speaker 0 00:02:23 Okay. So the parents are going to pay less, but the people who are like the childcare providers, like the, like let's call it like the YMCAs or like day homes, they obviously can't run their organization with half the money. So they would be applying for these bursaries or these grants to offset the cost. Or how does that?
Speaker 3 00:02:44 Yes, we're hearing there's two different grants that will be happening. There will be the subsidy. Um, so we've already had a subsidy system in Alberta for childcare. And so that is expanding. It was just expanded in, um, in Alberta, it went up to $90,000 per household income, not per person per household income. And now we will go up to $180,000 per household income. So more families will be able to qualify for subsidy. I, again, we don't know all the ins and the outs, and then there will be operator grants. So they will be able to take what they're not receiving for fees and apply that they see that money from the grant. So we refer to that as supply side funding. Gotcha. That there will still be money coming in because you need your money to pay for your operating expenses. And about 95% of operating expenses are staff wages.
Speaker 0 00:03:33 That's right. That's right. Okay. So as far as like me as in a household, I have some money allocated to me during tax time that I can write off. And then in combination with that, the provider may be the day home or the organization will also have some money receiving. And so in combination, it'll get it down to the $10 mark, right? Oh, interesting.
Speaker 3 00:03:59 Some of the parameters that are put in place around this. So is it, this is only for licensed childcare. Okay. So in four big deal, it is a big deal. So in Fort McMurray, um, we have lots of, of for-profit and not-for-profit, and as long as they're licensed, they qualify. Um, we also have a family day home agency. So any of the day homes that are under that agency, they fought, they, they, they qualify that as well. Um, we do have a lot of unlicensed. I don't want to say private because then we get into this for profit, not for profit private operators, but there are a lot of, um, people who operate like a day home out of their home that are not licensed through children's services right through the day home agency. Those, those day homes will not qualify unless that operator connects with the agency and becomes part of the agency. And that is, that is just a regulatory. So we make sure that they are meeting the requirements. Yes. Um, many day homes operate unique hours to meet the needs of families say operate with weekend care. They do overnight care for families all within the regulations that are set out by children's services.
Speaker 0 00:05:12 Great. Yeah. We call them old school babysitters. That's what everybody was back in the day. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:05:19 Y'all had babysitters. I just had an older sibling. You got the trial to watch the child.
Speaker 0 00:05:26 Yeah. I was the oldest sibling and we had babysitters because I was not responsible.
Speaker 4 00:05:30 No, you actually need the babysitter to stay at the house and watch the children. Right. And I'm pretty sure you just leave that's right.
Speaker 0 00:05:38 Yeah. Well, it's so different now. Like I just remember, and I had like amazing babysitters when I was a child growing up, but they were just like, what Tanner just described. They were there just as a warm body to make sure that you didn't burn the house down. They
Speaker 4 00:05:52 Could call 9 1 1 a little
Speaker 0 00:05:53 Faster than you. That's right. And now when you send your child to a day home or to one of these, um, daycares, there's the education component that they have built in and it's, uh, it's different, very different and more in depth. And obviously it takes a lot more work than just being a warm body. Yes.
Speaker 4 00:06:14 I feel like I learned you learn a lot more from them than you do from like your siblings or that one babysitter you had that showed you the video games you weren't supposed
Speaker 0 00:06:21 To be. That's exactly right.
Speaker 3 00:06:23 Yeah. So early childhood educators to become a qualified early childhood educator is two years of education. Right. Um, I started babysitting, I may 25 cents an hour. So that kind of shows you my age range there. Um, and I used to babysit on Sundays for a family while they took the older two children to church. And they left me with the twins, right. For 25 cents an hour. Um, however, most people don't understand what the role is of an early learning childcare person. And so they talk about them as we're going to daycare. And in daycare, we, we, we prefer the term childcare. And now we're trying to swing that even more to early learning because when we look at brain development to children, the brain is 90, about 90% developed by the time a child is five. So those first five years are critical to the development of children and no offense to the older siblings and the babysitters.
Speaker 3 00:07:16 But if you don't know what you should be doing for children at that age are not supporting children the best way that they can be supported a hundred percent. So one of the things with the universal childcare program and we're waiting for details is what is the workforce development going to be? Because they are saying they want to open up 42,500 childcare spaces across Alberta in the next five years. It's wonderful. We need more childcare spaces. We know that, but that will take about 10,000 early childhood educators. And we already don't have enough early childhood educators. So we're waiting to see what the workforce plan will be. Um, and I'm sure many families here in Fort McMurray have been calling childcare centers this week. Um, looking for spaces. Most centers here have space for children. They don't have staff enabled to open up those spaces. So it's, it's like when you go to the playground and you see those gear things in between the plexiglass, it's like, these are all the moving pieces, but somebody has taken off the handle. So we're, we're still kind of waiting for that handle to be there, to see how everything works together. So if
Speaker 0 00:08:19 I had to go through this two year program, is where do you take that? Is that something that you go to Kiano or like U of a, or where can these, this two year program
Speaker 3 00:08:28 Going to be taken? You can take it through Kiana. And Kiana has been working really hard in the last little while to become more flexible because a lot of people come into working in childcare through any equivalency, or they do what's called an orientation course. And then we want them to become more qualified, to be working with children. And so Kiana has, has flex programs used to be daytime. And now there's evening classes, right? So they're working to meet the needs of our community. There are other online courses that do their online colleges that do them, um, evenings. Um, so there is, we know that it's working, this is all come very quickly. So we know that there's lots of, there's lots of those pieces that need to be filled in. Um, I did my early learning actually here at Kiana college. I graduated from here in 2011, 2011.
Speaker 3 00:09:17 When I came to Alberta, my qualifications from BC only put me at a level one. And I, because my focus when I was in BC was school-aged so I have a one-year school-age certificate. So that was kind of like, my passion is working with children six to 12. Okay. Um, which is great because those children can tell you what they want to do. They can tell you what interests them. Um, and you can have really great conversations with children and you can teach them in really fun, creative ways. Um, not that you can't an early learning, but I had not had that experience until I went to, uh, Anzac and became a director out there with children. And I was like, oh, I was, I was like, you guys need to help me, like, like diapering, like last time I had changed people's diapers on a regular basis where my own children and, you know, a lot of times people, they have changing diapers.
Speaker 3 00:10:13 That's, you know, the worst, it's the most intimate time to have with a child when you're changing the diaper and the conversations that you need to have, need to be important and respectful to a child. So if you put a child on the change table, oh, you really stink, what does it do for a child's emotional development? So we really need to think about how those interactions are with children. Yes. When I went out to, to Willow lake and Anzac, I was, um, you know, those moving pieces. I was kind of scattered around as the moving piece, trying to figure it all out. And we did. And we, we came into a really nice program because again, it was a $25 a day funding funding. So it was a well-supported program. That was the NDP government that had, um, those $25 a day ELCC centers.
Speaker 3 00:10:57 And it was a pilot project. So the intent was that it would have grown, um, but life changes and it didn't. So we learned a lot from it. That's where we talk about Alberta's early learning curriculum flight. Um, that's where that came from. And so I now work with centers here in town, implementing the flight curriculum, which is a very reflective way of doing your practice. So it's taking all the core knowledge you learn as an early childhood educator, and then sometimes looking at it through a different lens, like, why are we doing it this way? Is this the best way for these children? Right? Because sometimes people get into it. We've always done it that way. Yeah. So that's the way we're going to do it. And that's not, not, it's not necessarily meeting the needs of the children. No,
Speaker 0 00:11:38 This is a big deal though. Like, if you can cut your for families in the community and when I can only speak about the community, because I only live here, but like you said, it's like 1300 bucks roughly a month to take care of your child. If you can cut that in half, especially like, I've always said, like, I have one child, if you got more than one kid, if you have like three children, the amount of money that it costs for childcare is astronomical. Um, and it's not just like before they go to schools, after-school care as well. So would this apply across the board for after-school care to know, okay.
Speaker 3 00:12:16 Oh, so this is there's, there's a few, there's a few gaps. And so this, there is people who are really, you know, why is out of school care left out of this? This is referred to as the early learning and childcare and for as early childhood educators to us, that's the zero to 12, but this has been capped at children from zero to kindergarten. Um, but as I was, I was reflecting, there was an announcement a few years ago from the federal government about school aged care or out of school care, depending on which term you want to use. Um, and then it kind of fell off the wagon. So I'm hopeful that once these early learning commitments are in place and up and running that out of school care can then be done. Uh, parents who pay for out of school care, pay about half the cost right now of what childcare is correct. Um, and, but their child's only there half the day. That's correct. Right. So it is still a costly, but I know that when I worked in out of school care, parents were always so happy when they kind of bridged that childcare piece into, out of school care. Then it wasn't quite as much as it is
Speaker 0 00:13:22 Important thing that I'm glad I asked that question because I, as somebody who knows nothing about this would have just assumed that it covered all bases, but like you said, currently after childcare is half. So you're kind of now bringing it down to the same point for the whole time. Okay. Very cool. All right. Well, listen, we're at the part of the show called the Mac CD minute. This is Tanner segment where he's going to ask you some questions. I don't know what he's going to ask you, so I wish you nothing, but the best luck Tanner hit her with the max 30 minute.
Speaker 4 00:13:51 Alrighty, question. Number one. What is your favorite thing about working with children in such an early part of their development?
Speaker 3 00:13:59 Uh, that children just have such a curiosity about how things work and why things work, watching them discover is incredible, incredible watching my grandson, trying to figure out how to get the magnet back on the door of the cupboard so that it locks and trying to figure out where it goes and that the way their body's position to try and figure it. So it's, it's incredible watching their brains work.
Speaker 4 00:14:24 Question number two, what is the funniest story you've had with a child you've worked with?
Speaker 3 00:14:31 That was a tough one. That's a really tough one.
Speaker 0 00:14:35 So Tanner, does he hit him with the hard question?
Speaker 3 00:14:38 I have. I, yeah. I don't know if I could say that there's like a really funny story because they make us laugh like a child laugh 600 times a day. So when you work in childcare, you can laugh a lot during the day and have a lot of fun. Um, though one of my real happy memories was when I was doing out of school care and somebody had donated a bunch of clothes and we had a wedding. Um, it was a great day and the only person who hit the fit, the wedding dress was a young boy. And he wore the wedding dress quite happily. And a girl was dressed up at a tux and it was just this moment of realizing it doesn't really matter, right. As long as you're there and having fun. And I mean, these kids, these children planned for weeks, they plan, like we knew this wedding was coming up. Like this was a process. It wasn't just like somebody threw on a dress and said, we're getting married. It was a process. And they was invitations and they had somebody who was the minister and it's beautiful play. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 4 00:15:39 Question number three. What is one thing you've learned from your children, from children that you use in your own life?
Speaker 3 00:15:50 What are some things from children that I use in my life? Man, you ask tough questions early in the morning. I think it does make me think. Um, I think the biggest thing I've learned from children is to be patient
Speaker 4 00:16:05 Question number four. What is one thing that you took from raising your own children that you still use in helping children of today?
Speaker 3 00:16:15 The power of being outside,
Speaker 4 00:16:18 Uh, and your final question. What is one thing you were surprised just to experience working in the childcare sector?
Speaker 3 00:16:27 How hard it is. People don't understand that you are on 24, 7 in a childcare center. And you're working with, you know, groups of, depending on the age, 4, 6, 8, 10, 15 children who all have unique needs and you need to try and meet all of their needs. Um, and so it is, it's, it's a tough job to do. Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 4 00:16:53 Yeah. And those have been your five questions.
Speaker 3 00:16:54 Thanks Tanner. So what brought you to Fort Memorial originally? Ah, my husband, yeah, my husband, um, transferred here. Well, we'll call it transferred here. Um, he's worked with the same company for 35 years, 36 years. Um, so we had an opportunity to come here and uh, we thought we'd come here on the five-year plan, like everybody else. And on our second summer, we were driving back from a golf tournament that we go to. And as friends of ours that we meet every year. And I said to him, you know, I'm really kind of happy in Fort McMurray. I said, so, you know, if it comes up that they want to, they want to transfer you. Cause our last place, we were only there for four years. I said, if they want to transfer you, we need to talk about it first. And it was like, oh, okay. Yeah. Um, and we've never really talked about moving since we feel pretty blessed that our three children are here and our two grandchildren and you're here and, and people. Yeah. When I go back to BC, you know, people, are you ready to retire and come back and I'm like, Hmm, I'm not sure I'm going to come back. Right. Like I love BC. I love my family, but I have my family here and we really, really love forming Marie.
Speaker 0 00:18:13 Awesome. Well, listen, don't even 20 minutes flies by and that's the end of the show, please, please, please, please come back again. And again again, I think, uh, we only scratch the surface on what you wanted to talk about from your notes over there. I know we only scratched the surface, so please feel free to come back as many times as you want. That being said before we cut you loose, everybody gets a shameless shout out or plug before they leave. So the cameras are on you. The lights are on, you have
Speaker 3 00:18:37 My shameless plug out for childcare. Um, as much as parents are going to benefit this, we'd really like parents to ensure that educators are, are also well supported through this universal childcare plan.
Speaker 0 00:18:51 Okay. Yep. There we go. Awesome. Well Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. That's been another episode of the Mac city morning show. Thank you so much for tuning in. It really does mean the world to me. I hope you're having a great day and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.
