MCCA Meets with Minister of Families, Hon. Scott Fielding

MCCA representatives met with Minister of Families Scott Fielding to tell him about our organization, our government relations plan,  and  learn more about his Mandate Letter from the Premier.    We were pleased to hear his support for early learning and child care as an essential service, the need to continue to expand spaces to address the growing number of children reflected on the Online Child Care Registry, now 14,168 waiting for a space.  Of those 7,672 children are recorded as need a space withing a three month period.    We raised a number of urgent issues with the Minister, including:

• the centres  with expansion projects underway and  still waiting for confirmation of start up/operating grant funding;
• the need for annualized, stable funding for centres and family homes  that receive the operating grant;
•  the long standing compensation problem in need of a solution, including  our support for a market competitive provincial wage scale for child care centre employees;
• governance and administration challenges that need to be addressed, such as the lack of  assistance for start ups and governance challenges faced by boards of directors of child care centres

MCCA was pleased to hear there is a commitment to  improve early learning and child care in Manitoba, and has submitted our recommendations to the Minister in an ELCC Briefing Paper, June 2016.

Categories: News

Posted by Jodie Kehl at 1:21 pm