Huron County's Five Year Plan For Child Care And Early Years Was Presented To County Council This Week
by Bob Montgomery
Huron County's Manager of Ontario Works and Social Services presented the Five Year Plan for Child Care and Early Years to county council on Wednesday.
Cheryl Patience explains the Ministry of Education requires them to create a five-year plan and in creating that plan they looked at six specific priorities:
creating more child care spaces, particularly for infants and toddlers
additional supports for making child care more affordable for families, particularly school age, because they fall outside of the Canada-wide and Early Learning Child Care Plan
boosting service quality and inclusiveness
strengthening community partnerships because they're often dealing with the same issues
promoting data driven decision-making, and being transparent about why they're making the choices they are
Patience says the issues are not limited to Huron County, but exist throughout Ontario and across the country. She adds, efforts are being made to increase wages to make the field of early childhood education more attractive, so that would be helpful, but there is still work to be done.
