Child Care — Continued

Goal: A sustainable child care system that meets the needs of families

Planning Context

There are just over a million families in British Columbia, and about 36 per cent of them include children under age 13. According to the 1997 Provincial Child Care Needs Assessment Survey, 45 per cent of these children require child care (278,000 children).

The demand for child care is largely attributable to the changing role of mothers in British Columbia. Statistics Canada reports that in 2001:

Access to affordable child care helps parents, especially mothers, participate in the paid labour force. Fiscal 2002/03 has been a transition year during which government has developed and implemented the first phases of its new strategic direction for child care. Foremost will be development of a new, sustainable, consolidated operating funding program and development of a new capital funding program. Additionally, a long-term plan is being developed to address child care issues in a comprehensive, coordinated fashion.

Objectives	Key Strategies
1. More child care spaces are available.	• Implement new integrated operational grant to support licensed child care spaces. • Implement a new capital grant program to increase or improve child care facilities. • Implement a new program to increase the quality of family and license-not-required child care providers. • Provide a referral Web site to help parents find licensed child care in their community.
2. Low income families are better able to meet the cost of child care.	• Provide child care subsidy to low income families.
3. Government is enabled to make informed decisions on issues that affect child care services.	• Develop options to implement long-term strategy. • Evaluate the operating and capital funding programs.