CHILDCARE

Access to high-quality and affordable childcare is an important economic development issue and Community Futures East Kootenay (CFEK) has been playing a leading role in supporting the sustainability of the childcare sector across the Kootenays. Childcare challenges are complex and directly impact our community’s ability to attract and retain young professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors.

Regional Collaboration

Since 2021, CFEK has convened a regional roundtable to encourage East Kootenay-wide collaboration to address the many challenges faced by the regional childcare sector. As a result of this work, CFEK recently lead a research study, in cooperation with Mitacs and Selkirk Innovates, aimed at documenting the business needs and challenges of childcare providers in the Kootenays. The key issues highlighted were wages and recruitment of staff, as well as business administration. Find out more about the study’s findings here.

CFEK is keen to continue to take a role in this constructive regional collaboration between local child care providers, public sector organizations, employers, and nonprofit entities to address this critical need. We also continually update a list of Key Resources with more information.

Training and Recruiting Early Childhood Educators

The ChildCareBC New Spaces Fund through the Provincial government is providing funding for more childcare spaces and with new facilities comes the need for more trained early child care educators (ECEs). At the same time we need to keep those already trained in the community, address wage concerns and workplace conditions for ECEs, and monitor the changing demand for childcare as the population changes. Interested in becoming an ECE? Check out the supports available to make it happen.

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Financial Viability for Childcare Providers

With the government move to universal child care, the child care landscape is changing and it is important that child care providers, a vital community resource, are setup to be financially viable to support our rural economies in the long term.

CFEK will continue to work with regional partners to highlight the challenges affecting rural childcare. Policy Briefings were produced in November 2024 and sent to key government officials regarding the challenges with housing, workforce and business supports that are threatening the viability of childcare in our rural region. You can view all the briefings here.