Children's Services

Child Care

Countless Alberta families can’t find or can’t afford the child care they need. We have a plan.

Albertans have spoken out with their child care concerns, indicating four key problems:
• Long wait lists for child care spaces
• The sector’s difficulty in retaining staff
• Concerns about the quality of care and
• Parents struggling to balance the demands of working and raising children.

An Alberta Liberal government will provide child care in this province based on a fundamental commitment to the QUAD principles developed by child care experts: quality, accessibility, universality, and developmental benefits for children in care.

We will have:
• More high-quality and diverse child care spaces
• A larger, more stable child care workforce
• Better support to parents and caregivers

We will work with employers and industry to develop a set of best practices to improve conditions for employees with children, and to increase understanding between employers and parents who work with them.

• The Alberta Liberal Caucus has, and will continue to, support a Child and Youth Advocate who reports directly to the Legislature, rather than to the Minister for increased accountability and transparency in the system.  The Advocate has to challenge the government, to point to the areas that the Children and Youth in the system have pointed to as insufficient, and this is best done from outside the department where one is not in fear of losing their own job for speaking out.

• Our caucus is opposed to “outcome-based” supports – we want a system that not only provides adequate assistance to our children and youth in need, but also those professionals who have been involved in providing the assistance. We do not believe in a system that places those in trouble on a scale from ‘uncured’ to ‘cured’ with no flexibility in planning, or funding. 

• We will address staffing issues within organizations and departments who work with troubled children and youth, and ensure that human services workers in the not-for-profit sector receive the same wages and benefits as their government counterparts. The design of Outcome Based Funding is not conducive to attracting new and well trained professionals to the industry.