Staff shortage temporarily closes daycare in Tsiigehtchic, N.W.T. | CBC News

The temporary closure of the daycare in Tsiigehtchic, N.W.T., due to staffing shortages has left a mother scrambling for child care. 

A photo of a sign notifying the community of the closure was posted earlier this week to Facebook with the community government logo on it. CBC News reached out to Tsiigehtchic’s administration about the closure, but didn’t receive a response by deadline. 

Dinah Blake, a Tsiigehtchic resident and recreation employee who works afternoons and evenings, says her one-and-a-half-year-old son loves daycare. 

“He wants to go everyday,” she said. 

Blake says the daycare has been closing periodically for the past few weeks and she has had to make other arrangements. Her father was watching her son for a few weeks and now her mother is, which involves sacrificing her own schedule. 

“That takes her away from doing her own thing at her own house,” Blake said. 

Blake said child care is difficult in remote communities. She works evenings when there are no services available and often has to rely on friends and family. 

“There’s only like a handful of kids that go to daycare — but it is a big help,” Blake said.

An N.W.T.-wide problem

Patricia Davison, chair of the N.W.T. Early Childhood Association, says staffing child-care centres is difficult across the territory, for a variety of reasons. 

“The wages often don’t match what you make if you’re at other jobs — and sometimes very comparable jobs,” she said.

“Often with the same credentials you could walk across the street to the school and work in their junior kindergarten programs and support programs and make more money than you can working in early childhood.” 

Shelley Kapraelian is a director of early learning and child care system transformation at the N.W.T. department of Education, Culture and Employment. 

Kapraelian says the department is trying address staff shortages in child care in a variety of ways, one of which includes the retention incentive funding program. This is $4.6 million in funding provided between 2022-23 to enhances wages for early childhood educators at licensed centre-based programs. 

No ‘magic bullet’ solution

Martha Friendly, the executive director of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, a policy think tank in Toronto, says staffing challenges are a nation-wide issue, and rural and remote communities often have it worst. 

She said longstanding issues can contribute to the problem and prevent new workers from arriving.

“You have to think about housing, about where are they going to live?” she said. 

Friendly said one of the biggest issues in child care is staff burnout, especially in remote communities where there may only be one or two child-care workers. 

Friendly said there is no “magic bullet” solution to the child-care staffing shortages facing the entire country, and that it involves all levels of government to address and build a sustainable program. 

“Everybody understands that. I would say this is everybody — from the prime minister’s office, to federal officials, to provincial, territorial officials, to all of the advocates in the training institutions — realize that we cannot have a child-care system if we don’t address the workforce issues,” she said.

Education

Early childhood educators are sometimes required to complete a certificate program or post-secondary courses. Davison says making those more accessible could help provide some immediate relief.

Davison says one possible solution could see daycares receive government funding to help pay for the education of the people they hire.  

“So they hire somebody who’s keen and ready and interested in the field, have no education perhaps, and so want to take the early learning and care courses,” she said.

“And the program actually ends up paying for those costs … because if they’re working in the field, it’s hard to be a full time student. If they’re not a full time student, it’s difficult to get student finance assistance.”

Distance education is available in the N.W.T. through Aurora College, where workers from remote communities can get the qualifications to work in early childhood education.

However, Davison says there doesn’t appear to be the output from the program to meet the demand for childcare workers.

‘We lose that tax base’

Davison says a lack of daycare workers doesn’t just affect parents. 

“The reality is there are people going on income assistance because they can’t have child care and go back to work. There are people moving out of the territory because they can’t have child care. There’s people lessening their work hours. There’s people choosing not to have more children,” she said.

“So all of that impacts the economy of the Northwest Territories because we lose that tax base from all those people that aren’t able to work because they don’t have child care.”

Blake, the mother from Tsiigehtchic, said she’s not sure when the daycare in the community will reopen, but is hopeful it will happen soon.