City aims to start 15 home child-care centres in region this year

CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

In Ontario there are 47 municipalities charged with administering child-care services for their regions. Since 2022, the City of Stratford is one of three where licenced home child care is not available – though that is set to change in 2026.

According to a management report presented to city council on March 9, preliminary work on a home child-care agency has been undertaken by social services staff in an effort to start administering support and oversight for area home-based child-care providers that wish to be licenced. As licenced providers, they would be eligible for the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system and could receive funding from the city.

The intent for this year is to establish 15 homes under supervision of an agency and a full-time home child-care visitor. Each home may support six children total and can be located in Stratford, St. Marys or Perth County, for a total of 90 spaces in the region.

Late last year and early this year, 88 licenced spaces were open. Additionally, 106 spaces are also scheduled to open this year. Despite that recent surge, licenced child care remains a sore point for many area parents. According to a late-2025 report, on average only about 16 per cent of area children up to the age of five have access to licenced, full-time child care.

The gap in coverage is not unique to the area, nor to just the province. According to an October 2025 report from Stats Canada, 58 per cent of children up to the age of five were in child care. About half of those parents reported difficulty finding that care, up slightly from the last time that metric was measured in 2023 (46 per cent).

Finding available care was the main challenge (65 per cent of parents), followed by finding affordable child care (42 per cent of parents) and finding subsidized child care (35 per cent of parents).

The Province of Ontario has set a provincial access rate target of 37 per cent by 2026, a target that is unlikely to be met, and even if it is a large portion of parents in the area will remain without access to care.

Stratford was given a goal of 461 CWELCC spaces for children aged zero to five for its service area. The City of Stratford has 261 CWELCC spaces remaining under its directed growth targets and if all targets are met, the area will have a maximum access rate of 29 per cent.

As of Dec. 31, 2025, there were 1,772 children aged zero to five on the waitlist for licenced child care.

In a unanimous decision, council approved the new agency and a full-time home child-care visitor. The total staffing and supplies cost for one year is expected to be $137,350. If it exceeds $172,720, the remaining costs will be shared by the city, St. Marys and Perth County.

As the term of the current CWELCC agreement ends Dec. 31, 2026, it is currently unknown if future affordable CWELCC spaces will be made available. Council discussed briefly what would happen if upper levels of government cease funding the spaces and Kim McElroy, director of social services with the city, clarified the department would analyze a business case for the homes.