The education minister said that wait-list fees don’t fit with the goal of affordable child care for everyone
A daycare chain that parents in the Halifax area have been upset about in recent months says it will stop asking for deposits from families who want to get on its waitlist.
Kids & Company used to require parents to pay the last month of child care, which cost more than $1,000, plus a non-refundable $200 registration fee to guarantee a spot for their child.
But the Ontario-based child care provider will keep the $200 fee to get on the waiting list because it says there is more demand than ever.
Some parents are upset that Kids & Company took away their “guaranteed” spot a few weeks before their kids were supposed to start daycare and told them they no longer had room.
Kayleigh Fleet says she paid the company $2,360 in November 2022, when her twins were three months old, to get two daycare spots for them. They were supposed to start at one of the company’s seven centres in the Halifax area in August 2023.
But when Fleet called to make sure everything was still in place at the beginning of June, she was told a few weeks later that her spots were no longer available.
“My heart sank,” she told him. “I had nothing else in mind. That was the plan I had. I paid them a lot of money to be my plan and care for my kids while I went back to work.”
Fleet’s time off for giving birth is coming to an end, so she has to take more time off without pay.
“I want to work again. I love what I do. I want to be able to take care of my family and give my kids everything they need and want, plus more. But I can’t because of where I am.”
When Fleet asked to get her deposit back, she was told that she would lose her spot on the new waiting list. But she hasn’t been able to find another daycare or private day home for her twins in a hurry.
CBC News has heard of a number of other parents who were left in the same situation.
In an email to the CBC, Kids & Company said it had to start a wait list because there were more people looking for child care. The company said that families will no longer have to pay a deposit for the last month in order to get on the wait list. However, the $200 deposit that is non-refundable will still be required.
The statement said, “We feel terrible that parents don’t have access to child care with us, and we are actively looking for ways to increase child care spaces to meet the demand for care.”
Fleet has since started a Facebook group for people who paid deposits to the same daycare provider only to find out months later that their spot had been taken away. As of Monday, 64 people were part of it.
Government respons
Last week, reporters asked Education Minister Becky Druhan what the government thought about daycare wait-list fees. She said that these practices “don’t fit with the goal of child care that is open to everyone, easy to get to, and cheap.”
After reporters asked Druhan over and over again if the government would think about getting rid of these fees, he told them, “We are aware of the situation, that’s for sure. And the department is thinking about what to do about it. I don’t know anything else about it right now.”
In 2016, Ontario was the first province in Canada to ban wait-list fees for daycares. They did this because they thought it was a “unfair practice.”
The Nova Scotia opposition parties say that the PC government should do the same.
Claudia Chender, the leader of the New Democratic Party, said, “We hear more and more about women who can’t go back to work or move on with their lives because they can’t find child care for their children.”
“So it doesn’t seem like this problem is being taken as seriously as it needs to be.”
Braedon Clark, a Liberal MLA, also agreed.
He said, “I don’t see why these fees should be allowed to stay in place unless there’s a really good reason I haven’t heard yet.”
Parents like Fleet are doing their best to take care of their kids while navigating a system that they say hasn’t been working so far.
Fleet said, “I hope the government steps in and gives us the spots they promised us. I also hope they stop these big companies from bullying desperate parents into paying these outrageous fees.”