Parents don't understand quality of childcare, study finds
Study points to heightened scrutiny at publicly run centres
Mothers and fathers don't necessarily know best when it comes to assessing the quality of care their children are receiving in daycare centres, according to a city-financed study that outlines the pitfalls of private-sector, for-profit childcare.
"Parents have very little information about quality in childcare, at least at the beginning," said Gordon Cleveland of the University of Toronto Scarborough's department of management. "But the caregiver has a great deal of information about what quality of service is being provided."
Cleveland's report, 'If it don't make dollars, does that mean it don't make sense? Commercial, Non-profit and Municipal Childcare in the City of Toronto', was commissioned by Toronto's children's services division, partly in response to rumours that ABC Learning, an Australian-based multinational childcare corporation, was looking to expand into Canada.
In 2004, Toronto Council decided to fund only non-profit childcare centres, and Cleveland's report said the city is right to discriminate against for-profit childcare centres, largely, he said, because the free market doesn't do a good job of ensuring high quality in the childcare sector.
He pointed to a study in the U.S. that indicated parents were generally happy with childcare that was strictly mediocre in areas such as health and safety, and couldn't tell the difference between high-end and mid-range childcare.
"Parents don't become good gatekeepers in terms of market service," Cleveland said. "The reality is that very good quality cannot sell itself at an adequate price. Parents won't pay for very good quality because they can't distinguish the very good from the not so good. So what happens in the market is very good centres get driven out, and the market becomes a combination of the mediocre and the poor."
Cleveland said his findings indicated that non-profit childcare centres funded by one or more level of government were subject to more informed scrutiny from qualified government inspectors, so had incentives to maintain high standards.
The report was delivered to the community development and recreation committee. The report recommended the city keep funding existing childcare centres, and look for ways to extend scrutiny to about 13,000 centres that are not part of the city's portfolio of childcare centres but are eligible for subsidy.
Ward 31 (Beaches-East York) Councillor Janet Davis, a consistent advocate for public childcare, spoke in favour of the report.
"This confirms what many of us have known for some time - absolutely the quality of childcare in the non-profit centre is better than that delivered in the for-profit sector," she said. "This has been an ideological debate for many years and there are now studies providing us the facts of what we've known for some time."
Ward 24 (Willowdale) Councillor David Shiner, however, said the city shouldn't paint all for-profit childcare centres with the same brush.
"Large corporate for-profit chains I will not support, but categorizing everyone here that's for profit in the same vein is wrong," Shiner said. "I believe that those out there in smaller organizations may be able to provide better service. We have to deal with the model rather than just coming down and saying all for-profits are no good."
