‘Without daycare, I’m falling apart’: 70 per cent of Hamilton kids 12 and under living in ‘child-care desert’

Plates, Tupperware and bottles are scattered across the kitchen counters at Kaylee St. Pierre's downtown Hamilton home on a Monday morning in late May. There's a high chair in the hallway. The living room floor is littered with toys and books.

Her six-month-old baby is content kicking his feet, rocking himself in his bouncer seat, while her three-and-a-half-year-old reads aloud from a book.

I haven't even brushed my teeth this morning," she said. Without daycare, I'm falling apart."

St. Pierre, a single mother of two, is getting ready to move out of the city. She has given up looking for child care in Hamilton.

We have been looking for daycare for two years now," she said.

The family's yard-less downtown bungalow offers little space for kids to play, and St. Pierre feels J.C. Beemer Park across the street is unsafe. So she drives the kids around every afternoon to keep them sane and occupied."

Personally and professionally, St. Pierre is stuck. And she's not alone.

For decades, parents have struggled to find affordable child care - or any at all - in what advocates have referred to as a child-care crisis.

When families can't access safe, reliable, affordable child care that they need, they are left with impossible choices," said Carolyn Ferns, head of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. They may have to turn down a job or school opportunity, or they have to settle for a child-care arrangement that they aren't comfortable with."

Locally, 70 per cent of kids 12 and under live in a child-care desert," according to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report comparing licensed child-care spaces to the number of children in a postal code. The 2018 report shows that Hamilton's numbers are significantly higher than in Toronto (40 per cent) and Ottawa (25 per cent).

And, within Hamilton, access to child-care centres varies depending on where you live.

Research compiled by longtime local child-care advocate Judith Bishop shows that some of the city's wealthiest neighbourhoods, like Ancaster and west Hamilton, have better access to child care than others, such as downtown and lower Stoney Creek.

Bishop, a former Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) trustee, said child care in Ontario is largely a business."

If you're a richer community ... you have more chance of being able to operate and run a business," she said.

That means that parents in some lower-income areas will have to travel further for child care.

You've got to get yourself to work, you've got to get the child or children to the child-care centre," Bishop said. If you don't have a car, you have to have your child care nearby or on a bus route."

Ferns said for years the sector has faced three big problems": affordability, a workforce shortage driven by low wages and too few spaces.

Soon, child care will become more affordable for more people under the province's new child-care program, with its catchphrase promise of $10-a-day care and thousands of new spaces.

But we still have a long way to go" to create and staff enough child-care spaces to meet current and future demand, Ferns said.

St. Pierre worries demand will soar and the odds will be stacked even higher against her.

Her son, diagnosed with severe autism and global development delay, has been on 80 wait lists and been rejected by 52 centres - a handful after being accepted - due to his needs. He also has anaphylaxis allergies.

I'm not able to work, I'm not able to go to school, I'm not able to get the well-needed rest so I don't burnout," she said. It's hard being an autistic parent and an allergy parent, constantly providing care for a child with absolutely zero support."

She said her son would need one-on-one support, which for some centres means hiring an additional staff person.

It is a human rights issue. They should be accommodating a medical disability," she said.

Data from the City of Hamilton shows that, as of 2017, there were child-care spots available for 27 per cent of kids ages 0 to 12 - but numbers vary quite a bit" based on age group, said Jessica Chase, director of children's services and neighbourhood development.

We see a much lower percentage in the younger infant age groups and higher percentages in our preschool age group," she said.

In Hamilton, there are licensed spaces for seven per cent of infants, 37 per cent of toddlers, 52 per cent for preschoolers and 19 per cent for kids ages six to 12, who often require before- and after-school care.

The city, which is responsible for administering child care in Hamilton, works with school boards and other community partners, she said. Whenever the Ministry of Education announces capital funding to create more spaces, the city steps in to help determine where they are needed the most.

We would look at the data that we have, we would look at where we've got gaps and we would specifically try and target those areas where we know that there are gaps," she said.

City data shows that the highest percentage of available child-care spaces are in wards 14, 2 and 15 - west Mountain, downtown and Flamborough East - and the lowest in wards 6, 11 and 4 - east end, east Mountain and Glanbrook.

In total, Hamilton has 88 licensed child-care operators that operate 218 licensed child-care centres and 7,749 spaces for children aged up to age six.

Wait lists for child care: We don't know what that number is'

Karen Strong learned in February her son was 94th on the wait list for child care.

The east-end parent had applied for child care at two centres - one recommended by friends and one in upper Stoney Creek, on her way to work - in fall 2021, hoping to return to her job as a teacher after an 18-month maternity leave. When she followed up in February, the centre told her to plan for September 2023 - a year after she'd hoped to return to work. The other wait list was similar.

In February, she expanded her search, adding her son to about a dozen more, using a spreadsheet to organize them.

Anecdotally, we know that many Hamilton parents are on long wait lists for child care - some for years and on multiple lists. Some parents have reported planning subsequent pregnancies around the availability of their current provider.

We don't know what that number is because it's collected by every individual child-care centre," Ferns said.

She said if it was collected provincially or municipally, we could better understand the magnitude of the problem.

Though new government funding is set to be injected into Ontario's system, it's not a public system. In Hamilton, approximately 20 per cent of the system is for-profit and 80 per cent non-profit, with one municipally run centre.

There's very little publicly delivered child care," Ferns said.

Strong considers herself fortunate - her mother has offered to babysit her son in the interim.

He's not going to go without, but I feel anxious because we don't have a backup if grandma is not available," she said.

Strong, a teacher in Binbrook, is going back to work part-time in September and hoped to increase the number of days in the classroom in the new year. But, without care for their son, it may not be feasible," she said.

I knew it was tough to get daycare spots, but I didn't know that as a toddler he would be on a wait list for two years," she said. I wasn't prepared for how challenging this is."

It's about gender equity'

In early June, two-year-old Mary was accepted into a daycare after a months-long wait.

She and her mom, Beverly Ricard, have been living at Martha's House, a temporary shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence, for about six months. After receiving a Post-it note with a move-out date in March - which was ultimately extended - Ricard said she wakes up every day in fear that today will be their last.

I'm not like every other family because I don't have friends or family that I can rely on to stay with. If I get kicked out of here, I have nowhere to go," she said.

It's not that she doesn't want to leave the shelter and find more permanent housing, and it's not that she can't get a job to do just that - she has had several customer-service job offers in the last few months.

But, without child care, she hasn't been able to save money for first and last month's rent.

All I want to do is work," she said.

Besides, Mary, a social butterfly who loves to give high-fives, will thrive" in daycare, her mother said.

Studies show that quality child care is enormously beneficial" to early childhood development.

Bishop points to one extraordinary" study that followed for 40 years two group of low-income Michigan kids - one with access to child care, the other without.

The kids who got the high-quality child care had more employment, they graduated more from high school, they had less incarceration in prison, they had less special education needs in school," Bishop said. They were more successful citizens."

But access to child care is not only about equitable development for kids.

It's about gender equity," she said.

When child-care centres and schools shut down during COVID-19, parents left paid jobs to take care of kids and oversee remote schooling, exacerbating an existing problem: mothers bore the brunt of the work. Parents - many of them women - left the workforce in droves as schools and daycares closed.

Fewer Canadian women are working full-time - 62 per cent, down from 70 per cent - in the wake of the pandemic.

A recent poll by The Prosperity Project, an Ottawa-based organization, found that more than 60 per cent of women with kids under 12 are worried" about going back to the office in person. More than half said they are primarily responsible" for taking care of the kids.

Ferns said the pandemic shed light on how vital child care is to the economy."

Workers in hospital, transit, grocery stores," she said. It turns out that everyone depends on someone who depends on child care."

Kate McCullough is an education reporter at The Spectator. kmccullough@thespec.com