Daycare is an issue used by politicians frequently in elections. The politicians use it to try to get women to vote for them. They promise to pour lots of money into the daycare system to make childcare spaces affordable and available. However, each time these politicians are voted into office, the first thing they do is break almost all of their promises. Affordable, available, and accessible daycare is a promise that has been broken time and time again.

It is not the government who subsidizes daycare. It is the daycare workers who care for the children while being paid starvation wages. It is completely beyond logic that the work of childcare, whether it is in the home or in a daycare, is considered so unimportant by government and society that the people who do this extremely important work go unrecognized for their patience and devotion. For example, doctors maintain a person’s health and save lives which is needed and appreciated in our society. However, many women bear children and spend twenty to forty years raising them for no pay and no time off. Why are doctors paid such a large amount of money for their job, yet women as mothers and daycare workers get paid nothing or next to nothing? The situation speaks loudly of the priorities of our society!

If you decide you need or want to put your child(ren) into subsidized daycare, you have to know whether the daycare spaces are available. You can find this out by calling the provincial office of daycare services in Halifax at:

Director of Day Care Services
Department of Community Services
P.O. Box 696
Halifax, N.S. B3J 2T7
424-3204

Ask them to mail you a list of subsidized daycare spaces available in your area. Put your name on the waiting lists at the daycares you prefer. Subsidized daycare is slow to get and once you get it, it is fluid and transferable to another daycare. This can be a huge hassle if the daycare you are moved to is further from your home or work.
The number of available daycare spaces in Nova Scotia is very limited. The provincial and federal government has consciously ignored this area for so long that in some areas of Nova Scotia there are virtually NO subsidized daycare spaces available.

If you have found a daycare in your area that you wish to enroll your child(ren) in, you should go to the daycare and ask to fill out an application. Then you will be put on a waiting list that could last from a few days to many months according to how many children you want placed in that day care and how many vacancies the daycare gets each month.

The cost of the daycare will depend upon how many children you have enrolled at the daycare and the amount of the income you are receiving.

If you are a single mom on ‘welfare’, some daycares will tell you that your child(ren) may remain at the daycare centre for up to six months. If you have not found a job or enrolled in school, then they will tell you to remove your child(ren) from the daycare centre. Other daycare centres will negotiate with you on this.

When you enroll your child(ren) in the daycare, you will be asked to fill out several forms naming such people as your next of kin, the family doctor, who to call in an emergency, and other information. You will then be told to take your child(ren) to the doctor for a physical check-up before they will be admitted to the daycare. Because this check-up is not covered by M.S.I. (Medical Services Insurance) some doctors will be mean-spirited enough to charge you anywhere between $20 and $50. Most doctors, however, will do it without charge if you explain you cannot afford their fees, as it only takes five or ten minutes and they won’t go hungry for having done the check-up for free.

When your child is placed in the daycare centre, be sure to ask the director for a copy of the regulations under the Day Care Act and for information about enrollment and attendance.

Some children are not cared for in a daycare centre, but in someone’s private home and are still covered by a subsidy. Depending on where you live, you may be able to get a subsidy for your childcare if the childcare worker is approved by the Family Day Care Board in your area. Contact the Family Day Care Agency in the areas of Sackville, Meteghan, Wolfville, and New Glasgow to inquire about this option.

Don’t forget about helpful resources for your children such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters. They match up your child(ren) with a buddy to hang out with, providing a change of scenery for you and your child(ren). Just look under Big Brothers Big Sisters in your phonebook.
I recently met some resourceful and ingenious low-income single moms who live in a housing project near Ottawa. These women were all on assistance and couldn’t afford to pay a babysitter when they wanted to go out for the night or just needed to get away from the kids for a while. So they developed a “coupon” system. They would swap babysitting services and keep track of it with these coupons. A woman with one child who babysat three children would get three coupons for babysitting in the future. They would give each other at least three hours notice when they wanted to cash in a coupon or two. They all worked hard to respect each other and be fair to one another.

This system had been working for over a year when I met them. If you live in a housing project or in an area where there are other women in our situation, perhaps you could get together and work out a similar arrangement.

When I became a mother many, many people offered help and support, which is amazing and made me feel good, but I really didn’t know how to go about actually asking these people for help. As single moms we are systematically burdened by guilt when we admit that we need help and regardless of acknowledging this bullshit, it’s still hard to call someone up and ask for their support. In the beginning, a few of my close friends were fulfilling my needs for a baby-sitter when I worked. This ended in disaster and we aren’t really friends anymore. They found that I depended on them too much and they were feeling strained by the commitment of helping me and my son. Our friendship fell apart because they couldn’t communicate their feelings. They just stopped calling me.

So, other friends who had seen what was happening decided to do something about it. One friend began to create a list of people’s names that had expressed interest in helping baby-sit and another friend set up a meeting of all the people including me and my son. Most people I knew, but some I didn’t. Even some of the people I knew previously were more like acquaintances rather than “friends.” Regardless if I knew them or not, all new baby-sitters went through training whereby they had to baby-sit with someone who had already done so at least twice. This allowed them to become familiar with my home and my son. Also, each babysitter seemed to have their own sets of tricks to babysitting and this gave the new sitter some ideas.

At the initial meeting we did two things:

So, that was the creation of the Care Collective.

At the beginning of each month when I get my work schedule, I call up that month’s coordinator and give it to them. They then contact and plan who will be providing childcare. Even when I need a break, I can call them and they will find me a sitter. This really eliminates any guilt about asking people to baby-sit, mostly because I’m not always asking people myself and because it has a bit of a formal structure to it. Since its inception, many other people have asked to be involved. It’s forever growing and shrinking and growing.

Since the beginning, there have been about two dozen members. These people have been a major part of mine and my son’s lives. I feel weird when people refer to me as a “single” mom because to me single implies alone and because of my son’s care collective I don’t feel like I’m doing this alone. It truly takes a community to raise a child and my friends are champions of putting this idea into practice.