SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
One of the difficulties young mothers face in Yellowknife is having to deal with the cost of child care while attending school.

Young mothers attending Aurora College were contacted by Yellowknifer this month to discuss their perspectives on attaining child care while studying full time. Some declined to go on the record because of shyness but five said it was definitely a struggle.

YWCA Yellowknife sent a letter with questions to MLA candidates earlier this month asking them to endorse universal child care initiatives due to a lack of affordable, safe child care spaces in the city.

"Lack of affordable daycare spaces is a significant impediment to women's opportunities to participate in the workforce or improve their skills and education," the letter to candidates reads.

"Limited choices for child care is an economic barrier that impacts our entire community. Lack of safe, affordable child care reduces the available workforce, increases the social cost of income support instead of potentially increasing income tax revenue and negatively impacts retention of young families in Northern communities."

Student mothers say they are often scrambling to look after their young ones and must rely on relatives to care for them or find affordable day care.

Dezerae Jacqueline Jonasson, a 23-year-old from Lutsel K'e has an 18-month-old son named Easton. Jonasson began studying in the aboriginal literacy program at the Yellowknife Aurora campus this year with the hope of upgrading her education and getting accepted into the nursing program. She said paying for her studies, along with child care for her son, has been very cumbersome so far. This is partly because she has not received any funding from her band.

"I have a full course load - three classes a day and nine a.m. to 3:45 p.m," she said. "Luckily, I have relatives here that take turns watching my son ... when I have no child care my mother steps in and I send my son to Lutsel K'e for a week or two while I catch up on my studies."

Another mother, who declined to provide her name, is in the nursing program with three children and said she has had to take a year off of school because it was "cost prohibitive" to continue with her studies.

"It is nearly $1,800 per month for child care and that is with two school age children," she said. "It is very unfortunate that there is not subsidized care for students. It really does make it difficult for parents to obtain an education. I am struggling to move forward with my studies and I always feel that the real struggle isn't the challenge of the nursing program necessarily, but rather making it happen."

Jeff O'Keefe, director of student services at Aurora College, said while the institution does not provide day care services, it does compile lists of resources that are available for mothers coming into all campuses. However, mothers are mostly on their own when it comes to finding day care, he said.

"Off and on we will get the question of why doesn't the college have a day care," he said. "I guess the answer has been that it has been because of money and space. If the communities (where campuses are located) had day cares available - and Yellowknife has enough day care spaces from what we understand - the challenge for college students is the cost of day care services."

Community colleges in the North vary on what they provide for child care. Yukon College in Whitehorse has provided child care services on campus since 1988 through the Nakwaye Ku Childcare Society. Day care director Val Henderson said 36 child care spaces are provided year-round - 12 for toddlers aged 18 months to three years old and the rest for pre-school age. She said the day care is designed to provide half of its services to students and the other half to the general public so when students aren't in school, there can be some downtime for staff along with some additional funding for the program.

"I think it does," said Henderson when asked if she thought child care services made a difference for student mothers with children. "It is just convenience because (the day care) is close by. We have observation windows where they can come and check on the child and come and visit them."

Lyda Fuller, executive director of YWCA Yellowknife said plans had been in place for putting a day care centre on the ground floor of Lynn's Place when it was built.

"We were keen to (provide day care) since is it so close to Aurora College," she said in an e-mail. "However, we found that we could not sustain a day care in the building and that the level of support to day care spaces is not sufficient to allow providers to cover their staffing and occupancy costs while keeping fees affordable for parents."

Representatives from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment were unable to provide a response by press time.

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