Text of the press release:
More than 18,000 net new child care spaces have been created in Alberta over the past three years, improving parents' access to quality care in rural and urban communities across the province.
"Thank you to our community partners in the child care sector, the business community and municipalities, whose dedication and forward-thinking has helped us exceed our goal of creating 14,000 new child care spaces," said Yvonne Fritz, Minister of Children and Youth Services. "These spaces will help to ensure parents have improved access to quality child care in their communities."
A total of 15,138 new spaces were created in family day homes, pre-schools, day cares and out-of-school care programs across the province. An additional 3,323 new kin child care spaces were also created, supporting the choice of some families to have a relative care for their children.
The Creating Child Care Choices plan provided Alberta communities with a wide range of incentives designed to offset the cost of opening new child care spaces, increase the number of qualified child care staff working in licensed and approved programs, and make access to quality child care more affordable for lower-income parents.
Now that the goal has been exceeded, the government's focus will shift to sustaining the more than 90,000 quality child care spaces that exist across the province.
Accreditation funding that supports wage top-ups for staff, and subsidies to help more than 20,000 lower-income families with the cost of accessing quality child care, will continue.