Daycare discrimination, Arghh!

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I have wonderful well-behaved 4 year old girl with autism who is verbal but delayed, and I'm finding it almost impossible to get part-time daycare.

I'm willing to pay for a full-time spot (even though I only need about 15 hour per week), and the government will fund extra staffing for the daycare or provide a big grant to the registered day-home provider, and I'm being outrigt denied by the daycare facilities it my town and by the family day-home agency. They won't even put me on their waiting list! My only option is to find a private person to do it or to hire a nanny, either of which I'm desperately trying to do. I've put the word out to family and friends and posted on Kijijji and Craigslist, I live in Alberta Canada, probably the only place in North America right now with a huge labour shortage.

This sucks, I'm a single mom, and I'm going to lose my high-paying, super flexable, amazing part-time job because these jerks are allowed to discriminate against special-needs kids. Social assistance, here I come!

PS... on the bright side, my little girl is amazing. She is making so much progress in her developmental pre-school program and we're doing speech and o/t. It's just not fair

i know what you mean. i gave up on finding childcare for my kids and had no choice but to put my career on hold, give up a once in a lifetime opportunity to do an appenticeship without having to complete university first and surrender to living on a very fixed income because i could not find any childcare for my 6yo step-son(who was 2 at the time) because of his autism. i couldn't even find a descent sitter and hired a child and youth worker to look after him and she left on us, got another sitter and the first day i came home she ran out the door when i got home and told me i didn't need to pay her and she felt sorry for me cause she can't handle this. he got into one daycare center and was only allowed to go twice before they told us his spot had magically disappeared. waiting lists, forget about it. you need to be on the waiting list before your kid is born if you want them to get in before kindergarden because they are allowed to limit the amount of 'special needs' spaces they have available. i think in canada daycare is a problem everywhere. here the centers are full of kids whos parents are on assistance and don't want to look after them but those of us that desperately NEED a space can't get one. i pretty much had to blow off my whole career because of it. even with him being in school full days now i still need to be available at the drop of a hat because he gets sent home from school on a regular basis and someone needs to be available to go get him when that happens.......*sigh* i am so frustrated with the whole system that i have chosen not to even try to find spaces for my youngest two and just continue staying home with them until they are all in school full time.

Daycare is frustrating. I had much better luck with a nanny. I hope you will, too. But, geez, those years were rough on so many levels. I swear it felt like Moses had parted the sea when I finally got the right nanny. Hang in there.

Were lucky here, the govt will provide childcare providers with seperately funded teacher aides for children with special needs based on the child's need. my son gets a 1 on 1 dedicated teacher just for him while he's at kindy so centres typically are happy to have kids like him as he's actually less work than a normal child for them.

My parents were able to put me in daycare but I got thrown out of one at age four because the new teacher couldn't handle me. Since then I had hated it but yet I liked my school daycare. I didn't go there often though because my parents were always home but sometimes they be gone by the time school got out so they sent us to daycare after school they had in the gym. I think it was free and the school district ran it but of course that would mean taxes pay for it duh.

She said that she could get funding for an assistant, which is also what happens in Australia, but that does not mean that they will not try to deny you a spot. It is not about having to have a higher carer to child ratio as the government funds that for special needs kids in many countries and from the original post this is the case in canada.

Have you contacted a disability advocate or the human rights commission. While these things can take time, and it may not help you, it will help others in the future and if you have the ability to go through with it, it may help.

Have you gotten written reports about your child's behaviour from the services that she gets. If they can say that she is no trouble, that may help them a bit. If they have had one bad experience before they can often not want to go near another child again with special needs. Hence if there one experience with autism was with a child who had really bad and violent behaviour then they can then make the assumption that all children with that condition are like that. Not right, but it is how people think. It may not even have been autism, just having a child with behavioural problems is enough for many of them to be too scared. Have you got written confirmation or something to give them to prove that they can get one on one assistance and the like.

The other really horrible option is the media, shame the centres into taking you!! !

In Australia the government is funding free day care for any parent deemed to be "at risk" of abusing their child and so all the day care spots are taken up with those kids whose parents are doing nothing at all. Even if it was justified, I would at least want the parents to be made to attend a parenting class or something of the like, while the child is in day care. We have parents on waiting lists here for years, but if you can't even get on a waiting list then that is of no help and I have certainly heard of what you describe happening here, but it is improving slowly.

How about au-pair? Though I have more faith in older women being more patient with the kids, good au-pair could be great. Considering that they travel from abroad, it is not so easy for them to give up .

Au-pair is a great idea. We now have "demi-pair" here in my country where the person gets room and board for an exchange of 15 hours per week in work. There is also the share nanny idea, I did that for years when I was younger, working for two families to make a decent wage and looking after two children instead of just one. It lessens the cost on the parents as well.

In the US, many school districts have special preschools specifically for "at-risk" kids and kids with some kind of a delay (including a social delay) to help them catch up before they enter the school system. Usually it aggregates all the kids from one district, so it's not necessarily the same preschool program that's available to all parents - it can take some digging to find it. However, the idea makes sense, so it's not unlikely that many other countries have a similar system.

I don't know how it works where you are - is this the type of preschool that's not allowing your daughter to join?

I live in Canada too, and this is outrageous!

Before my son was dx, we had one terrible daycare who we did not feel suited him, nor even liked him. This was an Ontario Early Years Place, where they are not allowed to discriminate. Once we moved, we never said anything to the new place, until they called us, and then told them he was possibly getting a dx. They have been nothing but wonderful. His main worker even went to an autism seminar on her own time and dime! They have told me that they cannot discriminate against a child with a divisibility.

I don't see how Alberta can be any different than Ontario. BS, are you looking at government daycare's? My son even gets speech there and we have meetings with all his workers to discuss what we need to work on.