Saskatchewan daycares have one of the highest percentage of waiting lists in the country.
A new report from the Canadian Centre for policy alternatives, showed 93 per cent of Regina daycares have a waiting list; 94 per cent in Saskatoon.
“It’s frustrating. It’s very frustrating, and it’s scary.”
Kathe Scrobe has been on a waiting list to get her children into a daycare centre for the past three years.
“I told them when my return to work date was, and that was that. I thought ‘Okay well they’ll just call me before CJ turns one, and everything will be hunky-dory.’”
Months passed without a call. Scrobe’s return to work drew nearer, and she still didn’t have a place for her son.
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“When he was about 10 or 11 months I really started to panic. By then it was impossible for us to get into a centre, so I started looking around for home daycares.”
It’s a story Allison Tholl is familiar with. The director of the Sandcastles Childcare Centre, she said she gets nearly every day asking about their waiting list.
“We have about 350 families on our wait list,” she stated matter-of-factly. “It’s going to be a long time before some of them are able to find a space for their child at our centre.”
It’s a staggering number, and one that ranks among the longest in Regina. On average, Tholl says daycare centre waitlists across the city usually range from 50 to 150 kids.
At her centre it usually takes between a 12 and 30 months to get one child off the list.
“We encourage families to start calling pretty much once that baby is born and we can get them on the waitlist.”
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