This plan does not transfer funds directly to the family but is rather a transfer of service. The funds go to the service provider on behalf of the family. Krashinsky ¹ argues that this is an uneconomical use of day care funds and that the equivalent amount of cash should be transferred to the family to be used as the family wishes. The family would then purchase whatever service it feels most in need of rather than being assigned to a day care service at the discretion of the social agency.

There are several outcomes from this policy. For example:

• if the social agency has the discretionary power to decide who shall go where, they also have the power to decide what services will be made available and will plan accordingly. This mayor may not be the same set of services which the family would select if it had the power to make the decisions. In Metro Toronto, local agencies are phasing out nursery services (for children under 2 years). Therefore, families requiring services for this age group will be required to use a family care service or to make private arrangements without subsidy.

• the governments involved appear to not trust the family to make wise decisions about using and conserving their resources. It does not quite descend to the level of mistrust involved in doling out two bus tickets each day to women involved in training programs (one to go home and one to return for the next ticket), but it has a similar feel. If, for example, the mother decided she wanted to use her day care subsidy to buy a used car for the purpose of transporting her children to her mother's house (not possible by public transportation), who is to say her decision is unwise.

4. Support for early childhood education services (pre-elementary) varies from province to province. These services are provided by educational authorities (as opposed to social agencies) to children of approximately 4 and 5 years.

For example, in Alberta, publicly-supported services in this area were phased-in beginning in 1973. Direct services were made available first to children with handicaps such as the hard-of-hearing, the deaf, the blind; to those showing aberrant, psychotic, or autistic behaviour; to the mentally retarded; to those with physical and perceptual disabilities; and so on. Next, the services were extended to those children from certain geographical areas which were considered to not provide equal opportunities in terms of needs related to nutrition, physiology, education, development, etc. Third priority was given to the provision of educational consultants for day care centres which serve the children of single parents or from homes in which both parents work.

One sentence from a planning paper by the Alberta government is worthy of note: ¹

"From infancy to school entrance age, the growing number of families where employment deprives the child of regular care, day care services must provide a substitute Quality of care for all children of working married mothers and working single mothers (unwed, widowed, divorced) is a concern of all levels of government --- federal, provincial and municipal."

Such a statement is common in the policy guidelines available from various governments in Canada. The unspoken implication is that mothers who go out to work are somehow depriving their children of "regular" care (whatever that is). Further this policy makes no mention of the children of working single fathers. It seems reasonable to assume that such children run as much risk of being deprived as those of working single mothers.

^1. M. Krashinsky, Day care and public policy in Ontario, (Toronto: Ontario Economic Council, 1977), pp. 68 - 69