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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Friday, October 31, 2014 | 16 Rules could benefit everyone continued from p.15 concerns to the attention of Oakville MPP and Ontario Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn, who's also former chair of the Region's childcare committee. Flynn told Metroland Media he's supportive of the overall intent of the bill, but also plans to speak with Minister of Education Liz Sandals on behalf of local childcare providers. "If something was presented in a reasonable way, I know she would take it into account and be prepared to study it," he said. "We need to ensure the parents in the province understand that it (daycare) is a safe situation and a regulated situation, but we also have to be realistic to the needs of the providers." A change local providers and CICPO hope for is a stipulation to allow independent home daycares to be licensed through the Province. Currently , the Ministry of Education only licenses private home daycare agencies, which then in turn contract individual caregivers for a fee that typically ranges from $6-$10 per day , per child. Skelton said many home daycare providers opt to not sign up with an agency due to the loss of income from fees. "If they (the Province) created a way to get licensed independently, that would create more safety. This would also create a database of people who are caring for children," she said. Flynn voiced his support for such a licensing system, noting "anything we can do to make the system safer is good." Due to the lack of a central database, there's no way to tell exactly how many independent home daycare providers there are in Halton. There are currently more than 100 home daycare providers licensed through agencies in the region, along with 272 childcare centres. Collectively, they offer more than 20,000 spaces, said Halton Director of Children's Services Mary Beth Jonz, who also supports the proposed bill. As it currently stands, the bill could slightly increase the number of licensed spaces available. It proposes upping the amount of children licensed home childcare providers can care for from five to six. In Halton, this could equate to the addition of about 100 spaces. The proposed bill, which will serve as an update to the dated Day Nurseries Act, came about after several tragic situations in the GTA where children died in unregulated daycares. In one incident, a two-year-old died in a Vaughan home daycare that was caring for 27 children. While these fatal situations occurred outside of Halton, the local Children's Aid Society (CAS) has conducted investigations into home daycares in the region that are exceeding the current limits. "I've been involved in situations where they (the home daycare providers) had 10 to 15 kids. At that point, it's clear they're doing it for financial gains only. That's where we would become involved," said Halton CAS Director of Protection Services Jennifer Binnington. Binnington said the proposed bill "has the potential to really strengthen the childcare system" and bring clarity to the expectations of daycare providers. A new MRI for Oakville. It's on the top of our list. Our new hospital needs more than 30,000 pieces of new medical equipment and sitting at the top of this long list is a state-ofthe-art MRI. Demand for this technology has made the addition of a third machine a priority for our hospital. Your donation will mean patients won't need to wait as long for access to a painless test that can assist physicians in diagnosing lifethreatening illnesses such as cancer, stroke, and kidney disease. We need $3 million by March 31, 2015. We're almost oakvillehospitalfoundation.com 905.338.4642 $1 MILLION $2 MILLION $3 MILLION