MONTRÉAL, April 29, 2021 /CNW Telbec/ - The Ministère de la Famille announced yesterday the holding of public consultations on the future of the educational childcare services network. La Coopérative Enfance Famille, the body that runs La Place 0-5, the sole gateway to spaces in recognized Québec daycares, is looking forward to taking part in shared discussions on the global reform process.
"That the Ministère wants to rethink the rational and the use of admissions policies is a great start, said Marie-Claude Sévigny, General Director of La Coopérative Enfance Famille. Parents are trying to understand how the spaces are allocated. La Place 0-5 allowed for more transparency. We are already looking at additional information that we could make available to parents to allow them to make an even more informed choice and assess the likelihood of getting a space when they need one. We will also be conducting a survey of parents to inform our deliberations. A number of aspects need reworking, all together, if we are to restore families' confidence in the system."
In its discussion document, the Ministère de la Famille correctly points out that "many parents wrongly see La Place 0-5 as a waiting list. This misconception creates a feeling of injustice in parents. Many of them feel that educational childcare spaces are assigned by favouritism, regardless of when their child was registered. This had led a number of parents to call the working of La Place 0-5 into question."
Source: Discussion document: Cahier de consultation sur les services de garde éducatifs à l'enfance, p.18.
So what does La Place 0-5 actually do?
An important player in access to daycare spaces in Québec, the single gateway successfully fulfils its mandate as a facilitator (and not a controller):
- Parents can access information on over 15,000 daycares on a single platform. They can also:
- View all daycares in areas that interest them with just a few clicks
- Read admissions policies for access to spaces
- Put their child's name on the waiting lists of facility-based daycares that meet their needs
- See available spaces in home-based daycares
- Recognized daycares gain visibility to all parents in Québec, in addition to a powerful technological tool that helps them fill their spaces:
- A dynamic and customizable list of children interested in their CPE or private daycare - for facility-based daycares
- An available spaces advertising functionality - for home-based daycares
- On a daily basis, the Ministère de la Famille retrieves relevant data on parents' needs – information that is used in analyses of the network's development.
Statistics on La Place 0-5 Over 325,000 children files created since 2018
Over 40,000 available spaces advertised by home-based daycares since 2018
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In light of the recommendations made by the Auditor General of Québec, the need for an overhaul announced by Minister Lacombe is unquestionable. In order to better meet parents' needs, and with the experience it has gained over the past 8 years as manager of La Place 0-5, Coopérative Enfance Famille is eager to contribute to joint reflections on improvements to the network that will benefit families.
About Coopérative Enfance Famille
Created in 2003, Coopérative Enfance Famille was the first organization in Québec to provide a computerized central system for managing waiting lists. It runs La Place 0-5, which in 2013 was designated by the Ministère de la Famille as manager of the single gateway to educational childcare spaces for Québec children, and since September 2018 covers all recognized subsidized and unsubsidized daycares. La Place 0-5 simplifies life for families by centralizing all the information needed to find spaces in recognized daycares in Québec. www.laplace0-5.com
SOURCE COOPERATIVE ENFANCE FAMILLE
Fannie Couture, Communications Director, Mobile: 438 525-7229, [email protected]
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