The founding board president for a Moncton daycare says more not-for-profit facilities are needed.
Conrad Melanson with Garderie McLaughlin Centre says communities need to build daycares, with more of them transitioning to not-for-profit.
The provincial government recently released a new action plan to strengthen New Brunswick’s early learning and child-care sector. It takes another step towards the plan to make $10-a-day child care a reality for families.
“The federal government has announced that priority should be given to non-profit daycares. One of the problems that we have is communities need to build daycares, the infrastructure itself is what’s lacking. We have a lot of volunteers on the board of directors who want to help out, but the parents shouldn’t be fundraising to raise money to create a daycare. It should be a community event,” Melanson says.
He adds federal and provincial funds are available and sometimes municipalities can also contribute.
“Once the infrastructure is there, once it’s built, the parents will create a board of directors and create the daycare and apply for designated spaces,” Melanson says.
He adds that research shows that the quality is higher at not-for-profit centres.
“The community is involved. Our board of directors, for example, is 100 per cent parents of children of this daycare. So there is, at heart, everyone involved in creating a betterment for the daycare.”
Melanson adds that the Garderie McLaughlin is one of the only daycares in the province that offers a pension plan for its daycare works.
He says they don’t have any trouble recruiting early childhood educators for their facility because of the benefits they provide.
“It’s our board of directors that makes the decision. We have medical insurance for our staff. We have sick days. A lot of daycares don’t offer sick days for the staff.”
