Child-care centres in 20 Sask. communities to split 601 new spaces

The federal and Saskatchewan governments announced Monday the allocation of 601 new regulated child-care spaces to centres in 20 communities in the province.

In a media release, the governments said the move is the first step toward increasing the number of regulated child-care spaces by 6,000 in 2021-22 and by 28,000 over the next five years.

The funding ​comes from the Canada-Saskatchewan Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Agreement.

“We know that access to child care can be more difficult in some communities,” Dustin Duncan, Saskatchewan’s education minister, said in the release.

“By providing child-care spaces regardless of where people live, our government is ensuring Saskatchewan families can have access to affordable, high-quality early learning and child care should they choose to use these services.”

The spaces are to be in Borden, Central Butte, Edenwold, Foam Lake, Hepburn, Humboldt, Kindersley, Kyle, Lucky Lake, Middle Lake, Mossbank, North Battleford, Odessa, Prince Albert, Raymore, Regina, Rosetown, Saskatoon, Stockholm and Viscount.​

According to the Ministry of Education, many of the spaces are for new groups who haven’t previously operated child-care while about one-third of the spaces are expansions to existing child-care centres and organizations.

The ministry anticipates the spaces will be available over the next year.

In early November, the federal and provincial governments announced early childhood educators in the province were getting a raise.

According to Monday’s release, the organizations getting the new spaces are to be given start-up grants and enhanced space development funding to support the creation of the spaces.

More than 1,900 child-care centre spaces have been allocated across Saskatchewan since the province signed the first federal ELCC agreement in March of 2018. The new spaces mean  7,771 new spaces have been funded since 2007.