Children's Services Division

The Child Care Service Plan is a tool for guiding the funding and management of Toronto’s child care system over the next five years. The plan proposes ways in which services can be delivered in a rational, accountable and equitable manner that maximizes the use of resources available to the system.

Meeting the challenges
The challenges and pressures on the current system addressed in this plan include:

• A growing wait list for fee subsidy
  There are 24,000 full time child care subsidies available and over 18,000 children on the wait list.
• Implementation of the Province’s Early Learning Program
  Full-day kindergarten begins in September 2010 and over the next 5 years, the child care system will see up to one quarter of children leave to go to full-day kindergarten in schools. Therefore, there is a need for adequate resources including:
  • capital funding for renovating centres to accommodate younger children,
  • operating funding to ensure affordable access to child care for families through fee subsidies
  • transitional funding to assist operators as children leave the system.
• A lack of physical spaces and capital
  Improving access to child care will continue to be restricted due to a lack of capital funding to address the limited physical spaces available in underserved wards and the lack of facilities for infant care.

Setting Goals

Some of the highlighted goals of the plan are:

• To advance delivery of a fully integrated and seamless system of services for children aged 0 to 12 years and families
• To promote "Early Learning for Every Child Today" (ELECT) as a curriculum framework for child care programs
• To advocate for the use of Operating Criteria “Quality Ratings” in all child care programs in Toronto
• To improve access to service and communication of information for families through the use of technology including online applications and 311 customer service