A committee of parents and the Town of Dunham are working together to bring a community daycare centre to the village to address the shortage in daycare spaces that the municipality has been facing over the last ten years.
To help bring this project to life, Dunham is benefiting from a provincial pilot project launched by the Quebec government last year. As Quebec experiences a province-wide shortage in daycare spaces, the pilot project provides a municipality with the opportunity to take one of its municipal spaces and convert it into a daycare centre for its community. Other Eastern Townships municipalities, like Brome Lake and Frelighsburg, have also benefitted from the pilot project.
According to Marie-Pier Genest, member of the parent committee, Dunham does not have many empty municipal spaces available, but the parent committee and town council are currently evaluating a number of rental options.
“Frelighsburg has done their own community project in their municipal park, but for us initially we couldn’t find where we could do that in our town. We started posting ads in local newspapers and we did have one positive answer that we are now considering,” explained Genest, who formed the parent committee alongside Audrey Normandin and Claudia Noiseux in 2021. “That’s the good news here, that it might see the day. (…) It’s still in the works, it’s not finalized yet, but we are very enthusiastic about it. It’s not the initial daycare we hoped for, but it will help a few families in Dunham that are desperately looking for a subsidized daycare for their children.”
Once a space is found that meets the criteria of the pilot project, which includes a separate space for a nursery, a separate and complete kitchen, and being the sole user of the space, it can move forward quickly, according to Andréanne Godbout, director of development for the Town of Dunham.
“The next step would be to coordinate with the CPE (centre de petit enfance - early childcare centre) Les Pommettes Rouges in Bedford. When we have a space that responds to the criteria, they start the request to the government to have the permit to start the pilot project. They are the ones in charge of finding the educators, the people that will take care of the kids. Then it can start very rapidly after that,” said Godbout.
Having a daycare centre in Dunham is a project that extends back to 2013. A project proposal was submitted by an existing early childcare centre to bring 80 new daycare places for families in the village. However, the CPE backed out of its decision and the 80 places were moved to open a daycare in Farnham instead.
Other CPE projects have been submitted over the years, but they were rejected due to the history of the originally proposed project and the government's centralization of CPE's to the larger town centres, mentioned Genest, leaving Dunham with a major challenge to find a way to provide daycare services to its families.
“We have the challenge of the government wanting to centralize and accept daycare projects in Cowansville, the town right beside us. They accepted 159 new places recently instead of accepting small village project like ours or Frelighsburg’s project. (…) The government seems to want to centralize where all the daycares would be, so Cowansville, and that’s a big challenge for a little municipality like us,” noted Genest.
Both Genest and Godbout emphasized that these daycare projects in Cowansville do not necessarily respond to the needs of all Dunham citizens.
“Even though there could be places in Cowansville, some of the parents would prefer to have it right in the community rather than travel to Cowansville and then turn around to go to work. The fact that the daycares are more concentrated in Cowansville doesn’t respond to the situations of all parents,” mentioned Godbout.
Combined with closure of a number of home-daycares in Dunham since the start of the pandemic, the lack of daycare spaces has forced parents to travel further to find a place for their child, making it more difficult manage work and daycare, or they have been delaying going back to work, causing turmoil and anxiety in the family, Genest highlighted.
As the municipality expects to see a continuous influx of new families to Dunham, the need for daycare services in the village is just as present as it was a decade ago. Genest emphasized that the parent committee wants to help as many Dunham families as possible and the pilot project is a first step in providing a short-term solution.
“The municipality envisions increasing its population in the coming years, concentrating on attracting young families more and more. There’s of course a scarcity of daycare places, we know that, it’s the foundation of why we’re here, and it presents a major obstacle to the families that would like to live in our region or that would like to live in Dunham but there are no places, that’s not attractive,” explained Genest. “I think that the lack of daycare centre places is hindering the development of our town family wise. (…) The need is still there. If the pilot project in Dunham is there, that makes 12 places.”
“We noticed that there are a lot of new families that are buying land or houses all around. The school in Dunham is full, that shows how many kids the municipality has. It’s really positive for the municipality to have that many kids, but at the same if there are no places for daycare that’s a lack for the municipality. We have to work really hard to find places for the parents,” added Godbout.
While the community daycare project is still “a work in progress,” Godbout mentioned that as soon as the municipality and the parent committee have any updates on finding a space they will communicate with citizens.
“When it all comes together, it might be a good time to ask the population for some furniture for the new daycare, so we might have further requests to the municipality along the way,” she noted.
If you own a space in Dunham that could serve as the potential community daycare, the population is invited to contact the municipality.
Listen to the full interview with Genest and Godbout below: