Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the committee members for inviting me to take part in your study. I am Marilou Denault and I am the Senior Advisor for Communications and Public Affairs at the Observatoire des tout‑petits. I am accompanied by Christa Japel, associate professor with the Départment d'éducation et formation spécialisées of the Université du Québec à Montréal, who will be answering your questions along with myself.
Today, I will share with you the Observatoire's two biggest concerns about the current situation in Quebec, which highlight the importance of some of the bill's guiding principles. We believe it is essential to ensure the quality of services offered throughout the network by using quality standards that are scientifically recognized, and also to improve access to good quality child care services for the very young and the must vulnerable. I will now explain in more detail why these are concerns.
Our first concern is to ensure the quality of services offered. Studies show that child care services can have a beneficial impact on child development and help reduce gaps in development between children from more privileged backgrounds and those from lower-income backgrounds when they start school. However, in order to see that positive impact, child care services have to meet certain quality standards. Given the haste to create spaces in order to meet the needs of families, we would like to remind you of the importance of using recognized quality standards that have been documented in scientific literature.
Currently, two things could, in our opinion, threaten the quality of services that we offer very young children. Firstly, the required training for educators seems to have been reduced by measures that are meant to help ease staffing issues. I am referring to qualified temporary replacement staff, who only need to complete 25 of the 91 training units on childhood education techniques. And yet studies show that educators who are better trained are more sensitive to the needs of children interact more with them and provide better care and a variety of educational activities that are age appropriate.
There is also the issue of staff turnover, which has come out as one of the main concerns of parents in Quebec in a recent study done by the Institut de la statistique du Québec. Studies show that children who have been exposed to more frequent staff changes interact less with adults and will get lower scores in language skills tests.
Our second big concern is improving access to services for the most vulnerable children. We all know that many children are waiting for a space, indeed in Quebec alone 32,000 children are currently on waiting lists. We believe that some children are worthy of special attention, i.e., children from underprivileged backgrounds, children of immigrants and those that have special needs. These children are doubly vulnerable, because they are the ones who are living in conditions that are more difficult and would benefit more from quality child care services. Unfortunately in Quebec, these are the same children that often find themselves in daycares where the services are of lesser quality. These children and their families face geographical, financial, linguistic and administrative hurdles, to name a few. For example, services are sometimes not adapted to the needs of a handicapped child, or opening hours don't meet the needs of a parent who has an atypical schedule and works evenings and weekends. We believe it is essential to take these hurdles into account within existing daycares, but also for any new spaces that will be created.
We would also remind you that working within the community and with community organizations are proven strategies that allow us to better reach vulnerable families. These families have difficulty accessing child care spaces, which means their children change daycares often, which has an impact on the quality of the relationship that the children develop with the educators, the sought-after stability that is very important for a young child. Moreover, according to a survey done in Quebec, once these children reach school age, those who have been to three or more daycares are more likely to be vulnerable.
In conclusion, we hope that the challenges described today will be taken into account by the committee in its study on Bill C‑35. I would like to finish by highlighting the need to invest in the development of nonprofit services over the next few years. The networks that will be set up by the provinces must also have quality indicators and provide proof of the efficiency of the strategies used to reach vulnerable families.
Thank you very much.