As the Chair of the Social Planning Committee, I worked with BCA Councillor Maita Santiago put forward motions to follow through on the development of quality of child care spaces. Council adopted these changes on Monday, March 27!
At the Social Planning Committee on March 15th, we received a presentation from non-profit child care operators in Burnaby on how to improve the design and planning of new child care spaces. We can establish guidelines in the design of spaces to ensure better sight lines, physically safer areas, and improvements to allow children to flourish as they develop.
The staff recommendation did not incorporate the suggestions from these child care operators for committee and Council to vote on, so Councillor Maita Santiago passed the following motion: THAT staff investigate the feasibility of enforcing adherence to design principal guidelines as developed by the Child Care Resources Group, for all childcare developments that receive funding from the City.
Then, because this has been in the workplan but not able to come to fruition due to staffing constraints, I added the following amendment: THAT the Committee request Council support the necessary staff resources for a policy to be developed that supports the addition of new, quality spaces, and for continued partnership in developing new child care facilities.
It's important that we also keep in mind that we do not make guidelines incredibly arbitrary and overly cumbersome that would prevent the development of new child care facilities.
Children matter, child care matters, and quality child care matters!
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