Married parent/students may not claim day care as a direct educational expense but may include it as part of personal living expenses. Another feature of the plan is that a single mother/student is no longer required to prove she looked for and accepted employment during the summer months. She remains eligible for her education grant if she stays home with her children for this period.

These changes in the OSAP grants are made possible by changes in the method used to calculate the grant. The new plan allows grants to be calculated on a term basis for full-time students and on an equivalency- to-term basis for part-time students. Each student is eligible to receive grants for up to eight terms.

While these provisions are as yet untested, the outcomes appear to be:

• a single mother/student is now defined as a "full-time worker" and has the same rights as others under this plan. She no longer needs to struggle to find employment to satisfy requirements for eligibility. Out of this employment she was expected to contribute a prohibitive amount to her own education.

• while the claim for day care expenses is very low ($200 per term), the fact that it has been acknowledged as an educational expense for single-parent/students is an encouraging precedent.

• married women students must still contribute to their own education out of their family's income, including that of their spouse. If the spouse is unwilling to contribute, the woman is out of luck. and is still not eligible for a grant, although she can probably obtain a loan.

6. Welfare lists tend to be the responsibility of municipal governments. Therefore, we need to consider at least one policy which is administered at this level and which relates to day care. One such example is provided by the newest policy directive from the Metro Toronto Social Services which administers day care funding and subsidies. The general policy states that day care subsidies will be available for low-income mothers who are single parents and who either work a minimum of 25 hours per week or who attend an educational program for 25 hours per week. These 25 hours may appear to be prohibitive but, in fact, have been defined in the policy directive as including two hours of study time for every hour spent in class. ¹

^1.L. Brown, "Welfare mothers organize to demand more cash", Toronto Star, 1978, August 11, p. C1.