Derek Neary
Northern News Services

FORT SIMPSON (Jun 11/99) - The Melaw Childcare Centre in Fort Simpson is behind in its rent, barely able to cover payroll and scraping the bottom of the barrel for program supplies, says manager Sharon Brown.

Things got much worse when the territorial government discovered an oversight and subsequently slashed the daycare's funding in half in April.

"We can't survive on that 50 per cent," Brown said. "It's time for the public to know that we're in dire financial straits."

Melaw Childcare had been receiving full government funding despite operating out of a government building, which is against the Department of Education's policy, said Fiona O'Donoghue, the department's director for Early Childhood and School Services.

"We had not been aware of the fact, I guess, to that point," she said. "Essentially, it put into practice what applies to every other childcare body in the territories."

Although they were given a few months warning of the impending cutback, Brown said things have become unmanageable.

"You're used to operating with what you had, and it wasn't enough to start with." she said. "We can't operate from grant to grant to grant. We need some solid financing."

Theresa Bezanson-Byatt, president of the Childcare Centre, said government grants account for roughly one-third of the daycare's funds.

"To give you a ballpark (figure) if you lose $15,000 per year, that's significant," she said. "When you're non-profit, you have a very small margin to deal with."

The money is used to pay the staff, the phone bill, janitorial services and to purchase groceries and supplies such as paper and crayons.

"We're very low on program supplies. Our computers need repairs that we can't afford to have done right now. The playground needs new equipment and to be fixed up," Brown noted.

The daycare also survives on the user fees paid by 18 parents who have registered their children full-time, as well as drop-in fees from others. The prospect of raising those fees to make up the difference isn't really an option, according to Brown.

"We don't feel the community can afford to pay any more. If that were to happen I think there would be a lot of parents saying, 'I can't afford to work,'" she said, adding that the possibility of private funding is being considered.

Prior to the government cuts, staff turnover was already a major issue at the daycare. Childcare workers are "notoriously underpaid," Bezanson-Byatt acknowledged.

"There's no way that any childcare worker gets what would be the base starting salary for an SNA (special needs assistant) in a school," she said. "So when you get quality, trained people, you lose them to higher paying jobs."

As bad as things are, closure is not imminent, Brown admitted.

"We don't want the community to think that they're going to come here tomorrow to drop off the kids and there will be a big padlock on the door," she said. "We're going to keep working...and knocking on the politicians' doors."

Brown added that she and Bezanson-Byatt made presentations to the Minister's Forum on Education when it was in Fort Simpson. She said she received a letter from Education Minister Michael Miltenberger last week. He suggested approaching the school board about a reduction in rent, according to Brown. She attended the Deh Cho Divisional Education Council meeting on Friday and asked that the daycare be given rent-free status.

"They'll get back to us," she said.

O'Donoghue said she feels sympathy for the daycare, but the department has to be uniform in applying its policies.

"If you were running a daycare in another community and you found out that an exception had been made for another daycare, it would be pretty hard to take," she said. "Of course we're sympathetic and of course there isn't enough money for anybody to function properly. We all need more money for everything, particularly in education, we know that. We just hope a solution can be found at the local level."