{"id":5015,"date":"2022-04-01T06:26:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T09:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=5015"},"modified":"2022-04-01T06:26:01","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T09:26:01","slug":"child-care-fees-dropping-across-nova-scotia-april-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2022\/04\/01\/child-care-fees-dropping-across-nova-scotia-april-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Child care fees dropping across Nova Scotia April 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Queens

Queens County Daycare. Photo Ed Halverson<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Families will pay 25 percent less for child care effective Friday April 1.<\/p>\n

The change applies for children enrolled in licensed, funded child care through the Nova Scotia Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement.<\/p>\n

Based on the child\u2019s age, parents and guardians will save anywhere between $3 and $10.50 per day.<\/p>\n

In a release, Becky Druhan, Nova Scotia Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development said, “This is the first fee reduction on our way to achieving $10 a day daycare, on average, for families by 2026 and a major step towards making child care more affordable and accessible for parents.”<\/p>\n

Licensed centres that have signed-on to the 2022-23 annual funding agreement, will be provided with full funding to offset the fee reduction and which will be applied directly to bills.<\/p>\n

Since being announced, 98 per cent of child care facility operators have signed the agreement, accounting for 99 per cent of child-care spaces in the province.<\/p>\n

Some parents can look forward to receiving a refund as the reduced fees are applied retroactively to January 1, 2022.<\/p>\n

Amounts paid above the new rates between January and March will be returned in the form of a cheque or credit.<\/p>\n

Parents can expect to see the retroactive funds by the end of May.<\/p>\n

According to the release, the province is still working on its strategy to increase wages and benefits for early childhood educators by this fall.<\/p>\n

Nova Scotia is one of the majority of provinces that has negotiated deals with the Government of Canada and either announced reduced child-care fees or already achieved an average cost of $10-a-day or less for regulated child care.<\/p>\n

E-mail:\u00a0edhalversonnews@gmail.com<\/a><\/strong>
\nTwitter: @edwardhalverson<\/strong><\/p>\n

To listen to the broadcast of this story, press play below.<\/em><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Child-Care-Fee-reduction-Apr-1-22.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Families will pay 25 percent less for child care effective Friday April 1. The change applies for children enrolled in licensed, funded child care through the Nova Scotia Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement. Based on the child\u2019s age, parents and guardians will save anywhere between $3 and $10.50 per day. In a release, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[400,658,662,659,663,661,660],"class_list":["post-5015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-becky-druhan","tag-child-care","tag-early-childhood-educator","tag-early-learning-and-child-care-agreement","tag-ece","tag-funding-agreement","tag-minister-of-education-and-early-childhood-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5017,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015\/revisions\/5017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}