Fall River child-care centre says it's closing for good next month

A child-care facility in Fall River, N.S., is closing its doors for good in Novemberand a co-ownerpredicts moreprivate facilities will meet the samefate.

"I know private operators that are struggling to keep their doors open, and I think that we'll see more and more private centres close in the next couple of months," said Lindsay Awalt, co-owner of Fall River Childcare Centre.

She blamesa variety of factors including alack of government support, not enoughearly childhood educators (ECEs)due to lowwages, and falling revenues because of a provincial limit on how muchparent fees can increase dating back to2016.

Awalt saystwo dozen children will be left without child care when her business closes on Nov. 4.

"They announced a year ago that the Canada-wide funding was coming ... but we haven't seen that much money trickle down to the actual ECEs,"said Awalt.

"Right now I pay all of my ECEs above the wage floor, but that cuts into the bottom line of our budgets, of course."

Nova Scotia signed a$605-million agreement withthe federal governmentlast year with the goal of increasingwages for early childhood educators beginning this fall, adding more child-care spaces across the province and average fees of $10 a dayper childby 2026.

Following a provincialcabinet meeting last week, Education Minister Becky Druhansaid the long-promised raise for ECEswould "happen this fall."

Cindy Duggans has been sending her three-year-old son to the centre for the past year and saysshe's not only worried about finding other child care, she's also worried about hiswell-being. That's because he goes to daycare with the son of her best friend, another little boy born two weeksapart from him.

"That's the biggest challenge and pain point for us parents is splitting the children up, there's no way they're ever going to be able to go all to the same place and that's what's upsetting for us," she said.

"We have been putting in significant effort with our son just to help him through managing those changes, and to now receive news that he's going to have a massive upset in his life was just earth-shattering for both my husband and I."

Awalt saysthe centre simply can't afford to stay open any longer while "running at a deficit where the owner and operators who are also the directors and work on the floor are not getting paid."

The Fall River Childcare Centre, formerly known as Mrs Robinson's Childrens Centre Too, has been around for 12 years.

It'sbeen struggling since lastyear whenit was denied a child-care licencethat would allow it to expand services to children between the ages of 18 months and 12 years. Although it was recently granted thatlicence, it's too little, too late, says Awalt.

"We were out about $10,000 every month due to low enrolmentbecause we had to get rid of the families that were not suitable for the licence," said Awalt."Wecan't really make up for it now."

Duggans said someconcernedparents in the areahave banded together to tell the provincial government that child-care struggles in Fall River are not an isolated incident and it's awidespreadissue throughout the province.

Duggans says she wants to see more accountability from the government to child-care providers.

"I feel like the reason why they have to close is because they were mismanaged by the government, and I would love to see some accountability for the hardship that they've caused."