Curious about contracts

Hi there,

I was just curious about the rest of the country. How do you structure your contracts with parents?

In Quebec, under the subsidized system, our contracts must end by August 31st. You can start a contract at any time of the year and end it any time before Aug. 31st, if you want, but they can’t go longer than 1 year.

This way makes sense for the school year but is annoying when a new child starts in the summer. You have a contract from, say, July to August then a new one from Sept on. Just makes extra paperwork.

When I’ve been reading these forums, I have seen people say they have to make a new contract to make a change in policies, payments or something. I’m just curious if there are rules or standard practices in the other Provinces too.

Quebec child care is very different than rest of country. I don't pretend to know much about how it works other than it's $7.something a day and it's driven by legislation no one else has, as it costs so much money to the government that tax payers in other provinces are supporting it via the federal tax dollars.

There are standard rules in other provinces but no two provinces are same.

Basically (and it's not the same everywhere) we can be registered/agency approved home or we can be unregistered/independant/private home - terminology changes too which makes complicate.

Depending on if agency involvement, we have limits to numbers of kids we can have. Sometimes it's the same ratios registered or not, some provinces have more/less for agency registered homes than if not part of an agency.

Some agencies charge in their provinces, some don't.

We are self employed so we have our own contracts, hours of business, and policies and as long as we follow the regulations for our provinces, and as long as we don't clash with our agency needs/rules then we are on our own.

Standard practices like vacation, leave, hours, seem to change by area and depend on what the local people will allow.

Along with having the freedom to make up our own contracts that work with our situations we can also determine how they function. By that I mean some have them renewed yearly either in September as the new school year when we often see a changeover of families or in January to coincide with the calendar year and at that time the contract implements new rules, often fee changes, etc. There is nothing that regulates us to do things one way or the other. My contract stays in effect as long as a family stays in care. Once they have a change such as a mat leave a new contract comes into play. At several places in the contract I do include the possibility of being subject to changes. This may come into play as Bill 10 takes effect in Ontario and we see what the true dynamics of that are going to be.