Minister of Children's Services

A strong child care sector helps parents get back to work or school and is essential for our economic recovery. To help support Alberta families we:

• Reopened select licensed child care centres to provide child care for core service workers who bravely kept essential services and our economy running.
• Expanded the eligibility for centres to provide child care for all essential service workers.
• Provided $17.8 million in grants to support licensed and approved child care programs to ensure they could safely restart and support families. We also provided an addition $1 million for licensed preschools.
• Provided almost $100 million through Alberta’s Recovery Plan ($27 million) and the Safe Restart Agreement ($72 million) with the federal government to help licensed and approved child care providers keep children, families and staff safe.
• Introduced an online child care certification application to make it easier and quicker to become certified and bring more workers to the sector.
• The updated Early Learning and Child Care Act comes into effect on February 1, 2021 and will increase the quality of child care in Alberta, and provide more flexibility for licensed providers so they can spend more time supporting child care families in their communities. The timing of these changes could not be more critical as child care is an essential part of Alberta’s economic recovery.

To ensure vulnerable children, youth and families continued to receive services and supports throughout the pandemic, we:

• Worked with partners to raise awareness to help identify child abuse and neglect; including children exposed to domestic violence.
• Centralized reporting of concerns of abuse and neglect to ensure a timely response.
• Created alternatives for housing and rehousing children and youth in care in alignment and relaxed licensing requirements for facilities supporting isolation requirements for children.
• Provided additional, flexible supports and funding to family-based caregivers to respond to new and unique needs.
• We are providing electronic devices to parents and to children to facilitate visits through Skype and FaceTime and using virtual technology assessments as appropriate.