Archive for the ‘Child & Family’ Category
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Ontario Liberals pledge free child care for preschoolers starting in 2020
The new program sees the government pledging to fund the cost of full-day, licensed child care starting once children turn two-and-a-half. The funding would cover their care costs until they become eligible for full-day kindergarten. In Ontario, kids are eligible for junior kindergarten in the calendar year they turn four, and senior kindergarten the year they turn five… [It] is estimated to save families $17,000 a year.
Tags: budget, child care, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
No equality without universal child care
Today more than ever, it is evident that the lack of affordable child care remains a central barrier to equality for women with children… The first child care milestone dates back nearly 50 years, to when the Royal Commission on the Status of Women reported on its work… It’s now 2018, and women whose grandmothers greeted the Royal Commission’s report with high hopes still don’t have access to the affordable, high-quality child care it envisioned in 1970.
Tags: child care, economy, featured, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living, women
Posted in Child & Family History | No Comments »
Parliament needs to cut back Canada’s excessive minimum-sentencing laws
Mandatory minimums elide much-needed context from individual sentencing decisions, constrain judicial independence and, as the courts have said, can amount to cruel and unusual punishment… Perhaps politics is involved in the government’s reluctance to keep its promise. No one wants to risk being seen as soft on crime. But it’s that sort of craven calculation that has brought us to this point. It’s time the government found the courage to prune Canada’s overgrown mandatory minimum sentences.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, ideology
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Child care all but forgotten in Ottawa’s gender budget
When queried by reporters on Tuesday about child care, Morneau pointed to last year’s 10-year, $7 billion budget commitment and the Canada child benefit, a monthly payment of up to $6,400 a year for kids under age 6 and up to $5,400 for those between the ages of 6 and 18. But neither advocates nor parents were impressed — especially since cash payments to families do nothing to create licensed child care spaces.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, ideology, participation
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Employment and Pay (In)equality: The Big Childcare Issue Unaddressed in the Budget
… a bigger bang for the buck could have been achieved by addressing the more significant problem head on: the childcare expense deduction, which is of limited benefit for so many families and mothers. Transforming the deduction into an income-tested refundable benefit, as we have suggested, would induce thousands of mothers to join the workforce, for a likely smaller cost than what’s proposed in this budget.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, jurisdiction, participation, women
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
New parents need flexible workplaces. Did the budget deliver?
Is the problem here really fathers? Or is the problem that Canadian workplaces are not flexible enough to accommodate workers who have children – regardless of the worker’s gender. Because until that happens, the employment problems created by the need for women to arrange their lives around children won’t really be solved. You are just spreading the problem experienced by one parent over two.
Tags: budget, child care, economy, participation, women
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Motherisk Commission calls for sweeping changes to child protection system
After identifying 56 cases where families were “broken apart,” commissioner Judith Beaman’s report makes 32 recommendations to “help ensure that no family suffers a similar injustice in the future.” … The Ontario Motherisk Commission’s two-year effort to repair the damage to families ripped apart by flawed drug and alcohol testing has produced sweeping recommendations aimed at preventing a similar tragedy, but in only a handful of cases has it reunited parents with their lost children.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, rights, women
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Don’t forget child care
What’s missing from all the leaks out of Ottawa is any hint that the budget will include the two programs that studies indicate would make the biggest difference in women’s lives and careers: a universal child care plan and use-it-or-lose-it paternity leave…. study after study indicates [that a national child care program ] would do the most to help women get back in the workforce, boost family incomes, improve early childhood skills for poor kids, add to government coffers, reduce child poverty — and, importantly, shrink the wage gap.
Tags: economy, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living, women
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Access to early childhood education services varies widely across Canada
“As more children participate in kindergarten and pre-kindergarten, child care is left to top and tail the school day and fill in during holidays,” the report says. “This is a poor model that leaves too many families on wait lists for child care, destabilizes child care operators and creates split-shift, precarious jobs for early childhood educators.”
Tags: budget, child care, participation
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
It’s time to let Indigenous communities manage native child welfare
Ottawa should start funding aboriginal communities who either have, or are in the midst of developing, their own child-welfare laws. As aboriginal child welfare advocate Cindy Blackstock says, “Fix it now. We can always argue later.” Of course, reforming child welfare is just the start. Knowing that children are safe and, wherever possible, living in their home community are minimum standards that shouldn’t take years to meet. But it is only one of many needed fixes. Too many remote reserves still lack clean drinking water, adequate food and decent housing
Tags: child care, Indigenous, jurisdiction, youth
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
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