EXCERPTS:
Many licensed daycares in Ottawa don't use the city's centralized waiting list, CBC News has learned, a $400,000 a year project that has left parents angry and confused.
Michelyn Siple first registered her son in the centralized list when she was pregnant.
She knew it would take a while to find a daycare spot, but the whole process was maddening, she said.
"I waited and I waited and as my return to work date approached, I got scared," Siple said.
"It didn't work for me. I never received a call."
Siple took her son's name off the centralized list after four years of waiting nervously, recently finding out many day care centres are operating with their own separate lists.
That has created mixed messages for parents and a disorganized system, which is not what the city had planned.
Day cares often use own list before central list
Many day cares also often draw from their own lists before the centralized list, which leaves some parents like Siple waiting for nothing.
"It's not the intention of the list and that's one of the conditions that we did ask agencies to abide by when they're using it, is not to be keeping secondary or other listings," said Aaron Burry, general manager of community and social services with the city.
The centralized list was first created eight years ago and Burry admitted, as child care has changed in Ottawa, the list has stayed the same.
Burry also noted even though the main list costs almost half a million dollars, only half the kids eligible for subsidized daycare in the city finds a space.
That has meant parents like Siple are looking in the wrong place for child care they desperately need.
"When the centralized waiting list was conceived in 2004, there was a certain profile of how child care operated in Ottawa," Burry said.
"Now that it's changing in terms of what the needs of parents and agencies change in early learning, we're looking at how that can be better served going forward."
-reprinted from CBC News