Does anyone know how the ministry determines capacity?

[babybear]

Hello,
does anyone know how the ministry determines the capacity of a daycare in Ontario. I am talking about the total number of spots for licence based location. Is it by sq.ft. of the location, or by the number of licensed educators available, maybe other ways to measure? :huh:
Thank you.

[Momof4]

For a home daycare - 5 - that's it - 5 - simple. No matter how many adults - 5.

If you are licenced with an agency there are age restrictions so check with them, but if you are self-employed and running your own daycare with your own rules and contract then you can have 5 children of any age below 10 years of age.

If you are talking about a centre, sorry I can't help.

[daycaremum]

If you are talking about a centre liensed by the ministry of education, the rules are listed in the day nurseries act and there are many factors, such as open floor space, and window space, number of staff. I would suggest if you are talking about a centre to google The Day Nurseries Act for Ontario (if that's where you are)

[babybear]

I am talking about a daycare centre. Tried reading The Day Nurseries Act for Ontario but it feels like it's an encrypted message :woot: Why can't they just explain it in plain english? I honestly couldn't understand a thing about how they determine the capacity for a daycare centre...:o
Is there any other official documentation that can be more explanatory and easy to understand?

[cfred]

I'm trying to dig deep in the recesses of my memory to our classes based on DNA. It was dry to say the least. As I recall (and I may be off track), the number of kids is based on square footage. Each child requires a specific number of square feet each. So your measurements for each room and for the play grounds I would imagine would be divided by the requirement for each child - the resulting number would be the number of children you're allowed per room and facility. Then you'd hire staff based on that number and based on enrolment. That's my memory of it, but like I said, that's a long time ago! I'm not sure about window space, etc. There are about a billion hoops to jump through for DNA. It's very, very precise and finicky. Our final exam was to go into a daycare centre that had been 'altered' and we had to create a new daycare from top to bottom. It took 4 days, no sleep and constant work in a team of 3. It's a very, very seriously huge undertaking (and we had an unlimited imaginary budget). Be very careful of your playground equipment as well. We also had to critique various public playgrounds....none of them were up to code. Very strict.

I'd look online maybe for DNA in layman's terms or maybe ask a daycare director if you could have a little time with her to go over it. Good luck!

[Play and Learn]

Here's a link that I have used in the past: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/dna//child_care_setting/

[babybear]

This is link is great. Can't believe I didn't see it until now. Thank you for all your input :thumbsup: