Licensed private home daycare

[cfred]

CICPO was fighting for it for a couple years. We even had several meetings with the Ministry of Education, agency reps, licensing reps, municipalities, etc. We were not able to secure independent licensing directly through the ministry. They cited cost as the main issue: They would be forced to pay even more inspectors for our oversight. Safe to say that the Liberal Government will never offer licensing. We were, however, successful in selling them our Cooperative idea which is, for the moment, on the back burner as we focus on other, more pressing things. The Ministry lifted the cap of 1 home visitor to every 25 agency providers, which was the key clause we were looking to change once licensing was squashed. This means that an agency has the freedom now to offer different models with varying degrees of oversight at less cost. Whether or not they will take advantage of that, we can't say, but it's possible now. We did hear of Compass coming out with more a more financially attractive model, but I wouldn't hold my hopes up too high for anything from Andrew Fleck. Their rep was not terribly receptive to the idea, lol. Sooooo, the point is, if cost is the issue, keep an ear to the ground as things may be changing in the agency arena.

The biggest fight right now is making sure that independent providers are considered in childcare issues at the federal level, which is what we're starting to campaign for currently. We're moving toward a national framework and should be included in those discussions if we wish to remain viable.