N.L. opposition calls for changes to prevent daycare dismissals for kids with exceptionalities

Newfoundland and Labrador's opposition parties say the provincial government needs to make changes to prevent children with exceptionalities from being dismissed fromdaycares.

Two children with autism, William La Montagne and Benjamin Pike, who both live in Paradise, have been dismissed from different daycare centres because there is a shortage of early childhood educators and inclusion workers needed to support them.

"It's kind of outrageous," said PC education critic Barry Petten. "It's quite sad, actually. It's disheartening."

NDP leader Jim Dinn agreed,calling it "heartbreaking."

"It's tragic," Dinn said.

The loss of child care is forcing William's mom, Kristen Parsons-La Montagne, to consider leaving the province for Alberta, where she said she already found three inclusive daycare centres in Calgary that will accept her son. The Pikes, meanwhile,say they will have to juggle their work schedules until their son goes to school in about a year and a half.

The families of the children call their dismissals discrimination, and the opposition agrees.

Both politicians say the situation harkens back to a decision last month from the human rights commission, which said the province's school district had discriminated against Carter Churchill, a profoundly deaf child, by not providing instruction in American Sign Language for the first three years he attended school.

"What have they learned?" asked Petten.

"It's a significant concern for the parents and for educators as well," said Dinn.

Consequences and change

One child-care industry worker blamed the lack of inclusion support workers on a legislation change from 2017 that required people working in regulated daycares to upgrade their education to become Level 1 early childhood educators at minimum.

Before the rule change, Trista Wells said, other workers and students who passed first aid and background checks could be employed in daycares as inclusion workers, and at one point families could hire their own support workers.

Now, she says, inclusion workers must be ECEs, who are often pulled to backfillother parts of the daycare due to shortages.

"If you're not looking at the consequences downstream, this is what you get," Dinn said.

Petten said he supports $10-a-day child care, but it created a surge in demand for daycare with too few early childhood educators to keep up.

He says he blames the province for the daycare dismissals because he thinks the program was poorly planned.

"You knew there had to be an uptake. Government should have had projections on their numbers.Now we've created another problem compounded by this lack of spaces, lack of educators," Petten said.

Petten said the province made a change to allow retired teachers to work in schools again for up to 90 days without affecting their pensions and should considering making allowance for anyone who would like to work as a support worker in a daycare until more ECEs graduate from college programs.

"Why can't you do something similar to help the child-care crisis?" Petten said.

Make profession more attractive

Dinn has another solution: the province needs to make ECE jobs more attractive andvalue the profession, he said.Anew wage grid for the workers isn't enough, he added.

"It's got to look at the whole benefit package," Dinn said.

"Early childhood educators, as I understand it, don't have benefits such as health and pension or sick leave. Well, let's start making [that] part of the remuneration that they get," he said.

Dinn and Petten say there are human resources crises in health, education, and child care, all compounded bythe rising cost of living.

"Government needs to really step up and do something," Petten said.

Dinn, a former teacher, says inclusion is more than just providing a support worker. It'sabout making sure a child has the same opportunity for success as every other child in that classroom, he says.

"Failing to do that is setting those children behind when they enter the school system," said Dinn.

Education Minister John Haggie has refused interview requests to speak about the families who have children with autism facing daycare dismissals a move Petten is criticizing.

"That response angered me, to be quite frank with you. I think you should answer any family out there. It's not acceptable," he said.

Dinn agreed.

"I cannot believe that government has not been receiving the same calls and has not found a plan to deal with [the problem]," he said.

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