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June 15, 2021CHILD CARE SERVICES, JANUARY 2021 Statistics Canada has released results from the Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services for January 2021. This is a pilot survey (voluntary response) that collected data from a sample of 4,000 centre-based, licensed and unlicensed home-based providers.
The Child Care Survey reported that there were 1,098 child care businesses in Nova Scotia (112 per 100,000 residents). Of these, 231 were centre-based, 83 were licensed home-based providers and 784 were unlicensed home-based providers.
Across Canada, there were 139 child care businesses per 100,000 residents. The highest number were in Quebec (227) while the fewest were in British Columbia (87). Although 28,250 of Canada's 52,794 child care providers were unlicensed home-based facilities, 74% of children received care from Canada's 9,762 centre-based locations.
Average daily child care fees were higher for centre-based locations. However, the daily fees were similar between licensed and unlicensed home-based child care providers. Nova Scotia's average daily child care fees were generally lower than the national average. Across many age cohorts and provider types, child care fees were higher in British Columbia. Ontario also reported higher fees for centre-based and unlicensed home-based providers. Across most age cohorts and provider types, average daily fees were lowest in Manitoba.
Among Nova Scotia's centre-based child care facilities, almost all offered full time care programming, while slightly less than half offered part time programming. After school programming was also available at slightly less than half of Nova Scotia's centre-based facilities while just under one third offered before school programming. Other types of programs (evenings, weekends, overnight, drop in, flexible) were offered by few Nova Scotia centre-based child care businesses.
All of Nova Scotia's licensed home-based child care providers offered full time programming while just over one-quarter offered part time programming. There were too few respondents to identify the portion of Nova Scotia licensed home-based child care providers that offered before/after school or evening/weekend/overnight/drop-off programming. Almost 20% of Nova Scotia's licensed home-based child care providers reported offering flexible programming.
A smaller portion (83.1%) of Nova Scotia's unlicensed home-based child care providers (which are the largest number of providers) reported offering full time programming. Just over 40% offered after-school programming and just under one-quarter offered before-school programming. Although low, there was a measurable portion of unlicensed home-based child care providers that offered evening/weekend/overnight programming. Drop-in and flexible programming was offered by a small portion of Nova Scotia's unlicensed home-based child care providers as well.
Source: Statistics Canada. Table 42-10-0016-01 Child care businesses by business type; Table 42-10-0017-01 Program options offered by child care business type, January 2020 and January 2021; Table 42-10-0019-01 Average daily fee per child by child care business type and age group, January 2020 and January 2021
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