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Prince Rupert's critical shortage of child care spaces could hamper the city's ability to attract and retain qualified employees in the future, said advocates of Prince Rupert's child care community.
"Having high quality child care is of economic value to the community," said Emily Mlieczko of the Westview Child Care Centre.
"Even at my own centre, we are getting weekly calls from families that want to move here, come to our schools but they are looking for after school care.
"We have to tell them 'no in our community there are not enough spaces available.'"
Mlieczko, Judy Riddell, of the Berry Patch Child Care Resource and Referral, and Anna Falvo, Early Childhood Education Special Needs, spoke at a school board meeting last week about the huge lack of child care spaces in the community.
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"Nobody really knows how many children there are after they are born until they get into the school district," said Riddell. "And we don't really know where they are located."
However, in order to get a handle on the shortage, Riddell took kindergarten enrollment and the first grade and extrapolated to see where the children are living.
She then looked at the number of spaces available for different age groups in licenced child care.
Based on 2005 numbers and using a very low estimate that 40 per cent of children have working parents who need child care, in the infant toddler category, there are less than half the spaces available for the community needs.
- reprinted from the Prince Rupert Daily News