All eggs in one basket

Communal child care an attractive option, hard to find in Winnipeg

New mother Wendy Madrigga-Laporte is greatly interested in communal child care. “It takes a village to raise a child.” Andrew McMonagle

Communal child care is a new term for an old concept that is popping up around Winnipeg.

In communal child care, parents organize themselves into a group and take turns supervising the children.

This way, parents can still go to work and have a place for their kids to stay during the week. Fees are decided within the community.

This is probably how many child care programs started, said Don Giesbrecht, president of the Canadian Child Care Federation.

“Formal child care has its roots in that kind of arrangement,” he said.

Many parents opt for an arrangement similar to the communal model, such as Stephanie Unger from the Many Rooms Church community.

Unger can leave her children with other congregation members while she goes to church. Based on service times, when one group of parents is at the early service, another group can watch the children.

They later trade up and the first group of parents can go to the later service.

Unger also uses a community model in her home, which is a collective of 13 people.

“One person does child care in our home as a part of the chores,” Unger said. “They were bad at cleaning, but good at child care.”

The idea of communal child care has gotten the interest of some new mothers.

“I’ve always believed in the saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’” said new mother Wendy Madrigga-Laporte.

She said she wants to go back to work and a communal child care arrangement would make that possible.

Yet she has concerns about trusting people with her two-month-old son.

“I’d be very selective about who I would allow to take care of Liam.”

Jessika Ellement is another new mom interested in collective child care.

“I have heard of [it] and it seems like a pretty decent idea,” she said.

“Having to go back to work full-time to support the family is so difficult when you have to pay 570 bucks for 20 days worth of daycare, if you can find a daycare spot at all.”

Giesbrecht warns the communal child care model is not always stable.

“Lives change. Jobs come and go and sometimes it’s hard to honour the commitment,” he said. “You’d still want some level of assurance that everybody involved has a criminal record check. You’d also want to have insurance.”

He said that centre-based child care (the most common model in Canada) is good for its predictability. The children know who is going to be there every day.

However, Giesbrecht is in favour of the parents being involved, even if outside of an accredited child care centre.

“Our mission statement is to achieve excellence in early learning child care,” he said of his organization.

In regards to a communal organization, he said, “If it meets the needs of the children, then wonderful.”

Unfortunately, since communal child care centres are not listed in the phone book, parents have to take it upon themselves to organize within their community.

Published in Volume 63, Number 21 of The Uniter (February 26, 2009)

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