Press Room

Thinking Outside the Box
by Sharon Arksey

Flexibility made the Lakeview Children’s Centre (LCC) unique when it first opened its doors in Langruth, Manitoba in February 1990. And flexibility has contributed to the success of the LCC program over the past decade.

“Our mandate is to meet the child care needs of the families in our rural community. Without flexibility, we would have not been able to do that,” says director Jane Wilson.

From its beginnings as a single rural child care program, Lakeview has now become just one component of Child care – Family Access Network (C-FAN), a model for rural child care delivery that offers a wide range of child care options to communities within a 45 mile radius of Langruth.

Wilson points out that flexibility in the C-FAN model includes everything from programming and hours to staffing and parental involvement. Flexible hours are offered to accommodate full and part-time child care, seasonal care during busy times on the farm such as seeding and harvest, and occasional or drop-in care. Flexible programs provide care to infants, preschool and school age children in family-like environments.

Staffing flexibility is reflected in split shifts, coming in at the last moment when needed, or taking the day off without pay when enrolment is low. And parents may willingly make other arrangements for their children in order to accommodate the centre on days when enrolment is unexpectedly high.

Flexibility can sometimes mean balancing community and family benefits against economic benefits to the program, weighing in favour of the community. For example, at Lakeview Children’s Centre extended hours are offered during harvest for as few as two children, even though staffing and other costs far outweigh fees paid. Some nursery school programs in isolated communities are operating with less than the eight enrolled children needed to break even financially.

Such programs are made available because they fall within C-FAN’s mandate to keep farm children safe from harm and to offer quality programs to children who need the social and developmental benefits provided. In addition, they are a way of promoting the C-FAN model within the community, paving the way for increased enrolment in the future.

Sometimes the red ink does force C-FAN’s board of directors to re-examine its programs. In the spring of 2000, the board reluctantly made a decision to close one of its child care programs because of continued low enrolment. A nursery school program continues to operate in the affected community and parents have been assured that if a real need for a full time program can be demonstrated, the program may re-open in the future.

Such decisions could not be made without a board of directors that is willing to adapt and change with the ebb and flow of community dynamics, to bend the infrastructure to accommodate new situations and to move forward instead of looking back. C-FAN’s evolution from one rural program to a network providing service to six communities at present is a prime example of flexible attitudes transformed into action.

“You need people who think outside the box, who are not confined by the way things have
been done before and who can see the potential in new ideas,” Wilson says.

Important roles are also played by government representatives at the provincial and federal levels, who can make or break the implementation of new and innovative concepts for child care delivery.

Flexibility does not come cheap and funding for flexible models of child care remains a critical issue. Without government support and without the corporate sponsorship of such agricultural corporations as UGG and Monsanto, C-FAN would find it difficult to balance its checkbook.

“We need stable funding to make programs such as ours work, “ Wilson says. “That funding is currently not there for rural programs. We have to look at rural child care as different because it is different.”

Still, Wilson admits there is a role for flexible models of child care in urban areas as well. The workplace is changing and the nine-to-five job is not as pervasive as it once was. Parents who work 12-hour days, night shifts and split shifts need flexible programs that may be difficult to find.

Perhaps that shared need can bridge existing gaps between urban and rural child care programming. The goal of flexible child care could become a unifying force within the child care community and policy makers may come to view flexible models as blueprints for child care delivery in all areas of the country.

Local governments, organizations, businesses and individuals can be a great help. The Lakeview facility is rented from the local municipal government at a nominal rent of $25 per month. The local grocer provides a discount on groceries purchased by the centre. School boards and churches have provided facilities for nursery school programs at no charge. Service organizations make donations toward specific projects. In one of C-FAN’s member communities, a senior citizen recently purchased playground equipment for the local centre.

Partnerships like these have been identified as a major means of overcoming funding and other obstacles to rural child care development. This “I’ll help you and you’ll help me” philosophy promotes solidarity and good will. It could also be translated as “I’ll bend if you will” — yet another example of flexibility in the development of child care programs that meet the needs of all, and not just a small segment, of Canadian children.

Sharron Arksey is a farm wife, mother and freelance writer. She works part-time in the C-FAN and Lakeview Children's Centre office. Her interest in rural child care goes back to the 1980s, when she was a member of the original parent advisory committee that started LCC.