Parents and child care workers are opposing proposed changes to provincial child care regulations.
The proposal includes changes to age ranges, ratios, group sizes and staffing. The most contentious of the changes include moving children to the toddler room at 12 months of age instead of 18 months.
Registered Early Childhood Educator Alicia De La Hamaide started a petition against the changes because of concerns for safety and childhood development.
"When you're changing the age groups like this there's going to be so much more diapering, so many more accidents that staff are going to have to attend to. There's going to be so much chaos going on that there will no longer be quality programming," says De La Hamaide.
There's also concern this could decrease access to child care because some not for profit centres may not be able to afford renovations needed to accommodate the changes.
"We try to keep our costs down but eventually it's going to have to be passed on to the parents because where are we going to get the money?" asks ABC Day Nursery Lauzon Supervisor Diane Pettinato.
A rally was held at ABC Day Nursery in Windsor with MPP for Windsor-West Lisa Gretzky and MP for Windsor-Tecumseh Cheryl Hardcastle to voice concerns over the regulatory changes.
"Because they are looking at doing regulation change it's not something that's going to be debated in the house so other MPPs will not have an opportunity to actually debate the changes," says Gretzky. "So we have to do that in a setting like this and we need the community members to push back as well and be vocal."
The review period for the changes ends April 1. To find more information on the petition and proposed changes click here.
