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Looking for information on child care practitioners in Nova Scotia?
For information on why Nova Scotia child care practitioners are an invaluable resource, read through the Importance of Child Care Practitioners section.
Find information on Nova Scotia child care practitioners' education and work life in the Child Care Practitioners in Nova Scotia section.
Discover what NSCCA feels are important issues and concerns for child care in Nova Scotia in the NSCCA Issues and Concerns section.
More information on the child care profession in Nova Scotia, and links to other child care organizations can be found on the Nova Scotia Child Care Connections site.
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Importance of Child Care Practitioners in Nova Scotia
- Child care practitioners support children, parents, employers, and local communities and contribute in great ways to making our society healthy and prosperous.
- High quality child care, provided by quality child care practitioners, has been shown to lower the rate of school drop-out and failure; reduce the need to admit children into special education programs; lower juvenile delinquency rates; and increase the detection and treatment of health problems.
- Behind working parents there are overworked, underpaid and undervalued child care practitioners.
- Quality child care and quality child care practitioners support and promote employment and facilitate parents in continuing education and training.
- Child care practitioners also enhance children's development and school readiness and rectify and prevent effects of poverty and disadvantage for children at risk.
- Child care practitioners provide family support by sustaining parents' competencies in raising children in a changing world.
- Approximately 70% or 41,503 Nova Scotian children, 0 - 6 years old, have mothers in the paid workforce. An estimated 9,500 of these children are in licensed full or part-time child care programs. With 10,00 children born in Nova Scotia every year, quality child care is becoming increasingly crucial in our province.
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Child Care Practitioners in Nova Scotia
- Approximately 80% of all child care practitioners in Nova Scotia are trained in early childhood care and education. Child care practitioners are educated experts in their field.
- The approximate 1510 child care teachers in Nova Scotia are paid an average of $7.87 per hour, just a little over minimum wage.
- There are eight early childhood training programs in Nova Scotia, and as of March 2002, 492 students were enrolled in these programs. These, nearly 500 students, will become the trained professionals caring for Nova Scotian children.
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NSCCA Issues and Concerns
- Child care practitioners are the most important ingredient in high quality child care. They love, care for and educate children during the most important developmental stage of their lives. Yet, the average teacher in Nova Scotia is paid only slightly more than minimum wage.
- To ensure quality child care, Nova Scotia must provide support to child care practitioners, through training, program standards, and recognition.
- For a decade, the government and those involved in child care have cited low wages as roadblock to maintaining a well-qualified, stable work force, which has a direct impact on the quality of care in Nova Scotia. (Miller & Ferguson, 2000Attracting and Keeping Qualified Staff in Child Care CCCNS
- Child care is a highly important job, practiced by individuals who are trained professionals in the field. Child care practitioners must be recognized as professionals and the importance of their work must be acknowledged in order to make child care in Nova Scotia the best it can be.
- To increase the quality of child care in Nova Scotia, we need to improve standards and guidelines for our profession.
- It is the shared responsibility of families, communities and society to care for the future generation. Quality child care is everyone's business.
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