General background

Day care services in Canada appear to have evolved out of three streams of thought and change: social welfare services for needy children; pre-school education; and the women's liberation movement.

The existence of social welfare services for abused, disturbed, retarded, sick, orphaned, disabled, and otherwise needy children has been provided for many years through government funds. The demand for more and better services in these areas has increased in recent years. This demand has shifted from large scale custodial services (eg. orphanages) to small scale family-type services (eg. foster parents, group homes) and to specific programs which meet specific needs (eg. hot lunches at inner city schools). Such services are traditionally funded as social welfare or health services. The various arguments for or against funding are based on the moral obligations of the society, and hence the government, to protect and maintain the well-being of its youngest members. The shift from large scale to small scale services is characterized in day care by an increasing demand for family care services. It is possible that group care services still bear the stigma of the workhouse image of rows of cots on which sleep needy children with runny noses and pale eyes.

Pre-school or pre-elementary education services were conceived as educational-developmental services and were based on the concepts of such educators as Montessori and Piaget. These concepts hold that any child can benefit from increased social, mental and physical stimulation; and that children who receive such services are better off when they reach regular school age. its original form, this need was based on the right of every child to the best possible conditions available for encouraging growth and learning, and was met through private group services However, as time progressed, we developed a disadvantaged class (If children whose parents could not afford the costs. Therefore, we developed remedial programs, such as "Headstart", which combined social welfare with educational services. To justify pre-school education beyond this remedial level, to a universal level, we run the risk of falling into an unacceptable assumption ... that such services are essential to the eventual well-being of the total society through the development of the "best" or "approved" type of citizen and that the average parent is not capable of rearing children to be this type of citizen. Under such an assumption, while the government would have a clear obligation to provide funds it would also have the right to control both the administrative and programming aspects of the services. Thus far, the public education systems in most provinces have extended public funding only as far as half-day junior kindergarten programs for four-year old. These are often universal but not compulsory, and are normally extended first to disadvantaged or disabled groups.