With the changes to childcare set out by the province in January, Wellington County’s Children’s Early Years has undergone some significant changes.
Director of the Children’s Early Years Division Luisa Artuso explained some of the changes to Wellington North council on July 9.
The EarlyON program will replace the Better Beginning Better Futures, child care and resource centres, Ontario Early Years centres and parenting and family literacy centres.
In Wellington County, there are spaces for seven per cent of the population of children, compared to 21% in Guelph. Artuso said Children’s Early Years’ priority is to open more spaces in Wellington County.
“The ministry, in their latest memos, they’ve been saying that they’re introducing a lot of funds for child care to try and get the province from 20 to 40 per cent,” she said.
In Wellington North, there are 58 spaces, enough for 9.4% of the population.
Artuso said the county is beginning its consultation process in Wellington County this summer.
“Wellington North is the only one that has a brick and mortar centre, which is in Mount Forest,” she said.
“So they are continuing to provide those services; however, we need to change the services that they’re doing, and we also need to expand the number of programs that they’re doing and make sure that they’re spread across a geographical area.”
Artuso said the changes need to reflect the community, and the required services differ from municipality to municipality.
“It has to be community-led, it has to reflect the needs of the community, so we’re in a very extensive community engagement project,” she said.
A survey, available for community members at gwearlyon.ca, will be open until October. After the survey closes, Artuso said community planning advisory tables will be set up in each municipality.
“We want to establish a working group within each local community to say ‘How are we going to make this happen?’” Artuso said.
She requested one person from council or staff to participate in the advisory group.
