A $1.4-million drop in provincial funding forced the municipality to rethink how it delivers children’s services.
Lucy Brown, general manager of health and family services, said she’s recommending to council tonight that May Court Childcare Learning Centre in Chatham and Wallaceburg Childcare Learning Centre in Wallaceburg are sold to private firms.
Brown said staff initially looked internally for savings, and cut the funding shortfall to $845,000.
“At that point, we have two choices – whack services across the board, or look at how you deliver service,” she said.
Brown said they choose the second option and sell the two operations there should be no interruption of service. The change would simply mirror how the municipality deals with its other day-care operations in Chatham-Kent
“We have purchase-of-service agreements with 15 providers operating 48 sites, including in area schools,” she said, stressing the proposed changes at May Court and Wallaceburg has nothing to do with the staff or quality of service.
“This is purely financially driven,” she said. “By changing to this model, we can save $700,000. We are changing the way we are delivering services. We are not closing sites, but are looking for operators.”
Brown said if the changes are approved, she hopes the switch to private operators at Wallaceburg and May Court are “seamless. We should see no break in services. The timing target is for over the Christmas holidays when we traditionally close.”
Brown hopes the new operators would keep existing staff, who she describe as “very capable.”
The municipality will also look to redeploy personnel if there are vacancies in other departments, if they are qualified, she added.
Even with the proposed changes, that still leaves the Children’s Services Department $145,000 short of required cuts. Brown said staff are hunting for additional savings possibilities, but if none can be found, she said they would have to trim from the pre-school early learning program. She anticipated it would drop to four days a week from five.
The program has been a boon in preparing young children for school, she said, but it is a bit of a luxury item, as only Chatham-Kent and Lambton County had the pre-ELP program running.
