In This Issue:

• AECEO Submission to the Ministry of Education Consultations
• Spring into Action for Decent Work! (Featured article available to the public)
• Canadian University and College Early Learning Lab Schools: What are they about?
• AECEO Submission to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
• Annual AECEO Member meeting notice
• and more....

We would like to thank the following advertisers for helping to support this issue of the eceLINK

 (Member Access)

In This Issue:

• AECEO Submission to the Ministry of Education Consultations
• Spring into Action for Decent Work! (Featured article available to the public)
• Canadian University and College Early Learning Lab Schools: What are they about?
• AECEO Submission to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
• Annual AECEO Member meeting notice
• and more....

Shellie Bird/Shani Halfon 

"Over the past 30 years there have been a number of initiatives in Ontario aimed at increasing wages for the early childhood education and child care (ECEC) workforce working in regulated child care centres and regulated home child care. In this article we will look back at what has been done to improve wages for the ECEC workforce in Ontario and examine how e ective these initiatives have been for achieving professional wages. Recent changes to the provincial child care funding formula and the $1 per hour wage increase for some staff working in the regulated child care sector will also be analyzed. A concluding discussion about where we are now and how we might begin to move forward will identify some critical points for addressing the chronic issue of the regulated child care workforce’s low wages." 

Read full article

By Dr. Rachel Langford, RECE, AECEO President (2012-2014)

The AECEO’s success in establishing a regulatory college for Ontario early childhood educators and creating a legislated professional credential for ECEs was a fundamental achievement in our mission to improve compensation and career opportunities for all early childhood educators in the province. Now, with the Ministry of Education’s focus on modernizing Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Ontario, the time is right to initiate the next steps in resolving these long-standing issues.

The recent “You Bet We Still Care” report substantiated the need for better wages for ECE professionals if we are ever to tackle the issue of recruitment and retention. Yet there are many challenges ahead and varying opinions on what, and how, the issue of professional pay for ECEs should be addressed.

When the AECEO board decided to focus its advocacy work on Professional Pay for Professional Work, we knew that we would face many challenges. Some of these challenges might be called distractions.

In the case of claims for Professional Pay for Professional Work and a drive towards realizing this goal we will be challenged by both distractions and possibly driven to distraction by some roadblocks. 

We have identified three distractions that many of us have been vulnerable to and some of which AECEO board members have discussed. Some of these distractions may be hard to hear but it is important to put them on the table for discussion.

Read full article here

October 2016

In 2016 we completed eight mobilization forums across Ontario, stopping in Sault Ste. Marie, Scarborough, Whitby, Mississauga, Waterloo, Brantford, Kingston and Sudbury and met with over 200 ECEs and early years staff. The forums aimed to increase dialogue and broaden understandings of decent work in the early childhood sector while also documenting the unique HR needs and challenges of the early childhood workforce in Ontario.  

Last September during our Provincial conference in Ottawa, our coordinator Lyndsay Macdonald talks about how we can strengthen our collective voice to call for professional pay and decent work!

We are partnering with long-time child and family advocate Olivia Chow and the Institute for Change Leaders to offer province-wide training sessions with the aim of connecting ECEs and early years staff with parents and engaged community members to strengthen our campaign for Professional Pay & Decent Work in early years and child care.  

This 2 day training session is an excellent opportunity for those working or studying in the early years and child care sector who are interested in taking up an active role in their communities and in our Professional Pay campaign. Participants will gain the skills and confidence to engage others, to become leaders in their work or school environments and to champion positive change in our sector.

The curriculum teaches emerging leaders how to:

• Gain self confidence to tell your story/speak your mind to motivate others  
• Recruit and retain members of your community/program to work towards a common goal
• Build strong Communities of Practice (CoP) that foster leadership among ECEs, staff and parents
• Strategize in a CoP setting and utilize tactics that build power and move decision makers
• Have a strong social media presence

Participants will take away skills and knowledge that can be used to organize Communities of Practice (CoP) and promote leadership among teams in a variety of early years settings.

A very limited amount of free registrations are available to students currently enrolled in an ECE diploma or degree program.  Please go to the registration page for more information.

For more information and to register for our session in Ottawa, ON - April 8th-9th

Lunch & refreshments will be provided for the 2 day session.  

Professional Learning certificates will also be provided to participants.  

March 8, 2017 by Martha Friendly

Changing the status quo for child care:  Easy as pie--1, 2, 3--A, B, C

In 2012, the National Film Board released Status Quo,  Karen Cho's documentary that aptly identified child care as one of three pieces of “the unfinished business of feminism in Canada".  A national child care program, the film observed, was one of the few (if not the only) recommendation of the 1970 Royal Commission on the Status of Women that had not been addressed at all.  

So on International Women's Day 2017--five years and a change of government since the film's debut--it is timely to take stock of the Canadian child care status quo once again.  

read full blog post at Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU)

February, 2017

In our response to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs' Pre Budget consultation process, the AECEO has made several recommendations to support the concept of transforming the current patchwork system of early years and child care services that parents and families currently struggle to navigate. 

Every day, ECEs make the difficult decision to leave the sector and the work that they love due to low wages and challenging working conditions that hinder their ability to fulfill their professional roles in early years and child care programs. An alarming concern as the anticipated transformation of early years and child care in Ontario rests on the ability of the early childhood (EC) workforce to take up 20,000 new jobs.  In order to recruit and retain well-trained, well-educated and passionate ECEs it is imperative that the Government of Ontario address the root of the problem:

The AECEO recommended that the Ontario Government develop and invest in a comprehensive workforce strategy for the ECE profession that includes

• A provincially established, annually indexed, regional wage scale along with annually indexed base funding for child care and other family resource and support programs in order to equitably raise the salaries, working conditions and morale of all ECEs and early years staff and to strengthen recruitment and retention. A standardized wage rate in the early years and child care sector will ensure staff with equivalent education and work responsibilities are paid a similar rate of pay no matter where they work. These initiatives would further contribute to higher and more consistent quality across programs. The Government of Manitoba announced a wage scale program on January 12, 2016.
• We support the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care’s call for at least $500 million in capital funding for Year 1 of the child care expansion to begin to make a real difference in availability of spaces; provide $300 million in new operating funding to keep pace with expansion of spaces, to support child care services directly and kick start a process of system transformation. The province should contribute an additional $75 million to address immediate crises faced by existing programs;
• The province should commit to moving from the current broken fee subsidy system to an affordable sliding fee scale, and begin work immediately to design an affordable fee model that works for all Ontario families;
• A provincial mandate and supporting funding arrangement to make the Designated ECE position in full-day kindergarten a full-time, full-year position comparable to that of elementary school teachers;
• Support for essential ongoing education and professional learning for early childhood educators and early years staff at all levels, no matter where they work;
• Appropriate infrastructure support, including funding to facilities, programming, curriculum development, and early childhood education and care organizations.

Click here for AECEO's full submission

News Release

For a third straight year, Ontario is increasing wages to help keep child care professionals in licensed child care settings and encourage growth in the sector, ensuring that children and families across the province continue to benefit from safe, high-quality child care that promotes early learning and development.

As part of Ontario's commitment to supporting child care professionals, the program will receive ongoing, annual funding. This year, the province will provide:

• An ongoing wage enhancement, up to $2 per hour plus benefits, for eligible child care workers and home visitors in the licensed child care sector.
• An ongoing enhancement, up to $20 per day, for eligible home child care providers.
• A raise in the maximum hourly wage to be eligible for the wage enhancement - an increase of 1.5 per cent to $26.68 per hour. For home child care providers, the daily fees maximum will be $266.80 per day.

Full information available at news.Ontario.ca

The AECEO has long called for a publicly funded, high quality, universal child care system in Ontario – one that is affordable for all families and that ensures professional pay and decent work for the early childhood (EC) workforce.

We were very pleased to submit our response, highlighting the need for support for the early childhood workforce, to the Ministry of Education’s consultations on its Early Years and Child Care Strategy.

Introduction

The AECEO is the professional association for Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) in Ontario. We support ECEs in their professional practice and advocate for the recognition and appropriate compensation of the profession.  Our members are working throughout Ontario in programs for young children and their families, including regulated child care, full-day kindergarten, family resource programs and support services for children with disabilities, among others.

As ECEs, we support the government of Ontario’s commitment to transforming the way early years and child care/early learning programs are delivered in the province. As studies have shown, investment in early childhood education and care (ECEC) through accessible, quality, and affordable options has significant positive economic implications for individuals and for society. 

MPP Indira Naidoo-Harris, Minister responsible for Early Years and Child Care has referred to the government’s commitment as Ontario’s opportunity to be transformative, to be groundbreaking and to be visionary (Toronto Consultation, December 7^th 2016). The AECEO applauds this significant commitment and we look forward to working with the government in addressing barriers to EC workforce advancement. We also applaud the government’s commitment to the consultation process, as consultation with the early years and child care sector is a vital component of this transformation. The AECEO requests that the Ministry of Education release a summary of what they heard from the community through the consultation process as we work together to “get this done right” (Toronto Consultation, December 7^th 2016)

Read full response here...

OTHER RESPONSES

CRRU response to consultation

Unifor Submission to the Ontario Consultation on an Early Years and Child Care Strategy 

Public and not-for-profit network will deliver best child care for Ontarians: CUPE submission

Better Child Care for Ontario: CCPA submission

We would like to thank the following advertisers for helping to support this issue of the eceLINK

Food for Tots
Heartsafe
Infant Mental Health Promotion - Early Years Conference
Johnson Insurance
Pearson
Queen's University 
Retired Teachers of Ontario
Sentient
School Specialty
University of Guelph-Humber

 (Member Access)

We would like to thank the following advertisers for helping to support this issue of the eceLINK

Food for Tots
Heartsafe
Infant Mental Health Promotion - Early Years Conference
Johnson Insurance
Pearson
Queen's University 
Retired Teachers of Ontario
Sentient
School Specialty
University of Guelph-Humber 

This holiday season, why not give an exceptional teacher or early childhood educator the gift of recognition by nominating them for a Prime Minister's Award.

National awards are worth $5,000 and recipients honoured by the Prime Minister. Nomination packages are available at www.pma.gc.ca.

Need inspiration? Check out the terrific teachers and early childhood educators that were honoured in the fall.

You have until January 9, 2017 to submit a nomination. For more information visit www.pma.gc.ca or call 613-991-4255

2016 child care fees in Canada’s big cities

This study, the third in a series beginning in 2014, reveals the most and least expensive cities for child care in Canada. The study provides an annual snapshot of median parental child care fees in Canada’s biggest 28 cities for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. It finds that wait lists are common for regulated child care, which is more expensive than it was two years ago, with fees rising an average of over 8% since 2014—three times faster than inflation.

Read more...

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FEB 3, 2017

Ministry of Education Consultations on Early Years and Child Care Strategy

The Ministry of Education has just released Building a Better Future: A discussion paper for transforming early years and child care in Ontario and has invited the community to make submissions online and/or in person at a series of public consultation meetings in selected communities around Ontario.

Please share this information widely. AECEO urges all RECEs and early years staff to attend these public consultation meetings or to provide feedback online to ensure that educator voices are heard in this important policy process. Expansion of Ontario's early years and child care sector will require systemic solutions to address longstanding issues of recruitment, retention and remuneration in the early years sector. 

Please read the Ministry of Education's discussion paper and let them know what youneed in order to create a quality early years and child care system in Ontario. All RECEs and early years staff deserve #ProfessionalPay and #DecentWork. The deadline for online submissions is February 3 2017 the AECEO will make a submission and we will share our response with the community as soon as it is available.

The Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC) has created a helpful tip sheet which includes a schedule of the in-person consultation dates. 

For more information and to submit your feedback online please go to: https://www.ontario.ca/page/consultation-early-years-and-child-care-strategy

• RELATED: Read the CCAAC's What We Want in an Early Learning and Child Care Framework and Child Care in Canada by 2020: A Vision and a Way Forward

HiMama Podcast #16 - November 1, 2016

AECEO Provincial Board Secretary Chanequa Cameron, a Master’s degree student at Ryerson University, is this week’s guest speaker on the Hi Mama, THE PRESCHOOL PODCAST. Chanequa discusses how early childhood educators can take an active role in creating positive change for the profession and the need for stakeholders to work together to close the early childhood professionalization gap as noted in the AECEO’s recently released paper “I’m more than ‘just’ an ECE”: Decent work from the perspective of Ontario's early childhood workforce

Click here for Podcast

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Oct. 25, 2016)