Children's needs come first at daycare centres

BELLEVILLE, Ont. (16/01/12) - Sandra Lynds, a teacher at Little Rascals Daycare Centre, has taught all the staff and some of the children how to communicate using sign language. Her abilities have allowed the centre to welcome deaf children to the centre. Photo by Amielle Christopherson.

By Amielle Christopherson

Staff at daycare centres in Belleville say they are eager to learn how to adapt to children’s individual needs.

That includes anything from learning how to sign for children who are deaf to learning all the facts about diabetes and insulin. No matter what, it’s always about putting the child, not the special need, first.

“Every parent is entitled to their child’s needs being met,” said Debbie Milne, the executive director of First Adventure Childcare Development Centre. “ All children should have that right to have access to all programs.”

As such, daycare centres do what they can to best serve their little charges. But that’s not where the issue lies. The problem is the fact that extra help is often where funding gets cut first.

“We couldn’t offer some of the services without the aid of the community,” Jennifer deGroot said gratefully as the manager of the on-campus child care centre at Loyalist College.

deGroot finds she’s been needing more of that help in the last five to 10 years, especially since she’s finding that there are more children who are being diagnosed earlier with autism.

“I don’t know if that’s because there’s a broader spectrum that children can be fit into, but there has been a rise in numbers.”

Little Rascals Daycare Centre has gone a step further than not just having their staff learning to sign, but to hiring a deaf daycare worker. Five years ago, they hired Sandra Lynds, the sign language teacher, and since then, she’s taught all of the staff how to sign, as well as any of the children who are at the centre during the day. Hiring Lynds has allowed the centre staff to accept five deaf children comfortably into their midst.

Pam Elliott, one half of the management at Little Rascals, acknowledges that, for their daycare centre, having Lynds there is extremely important. The benefits are not just for the present, but also for the future, which is something younger parents are embracing.

“These children learn that children with disabilities are no different,” she said, “When they go to public school, they have no fear of seeing a child with a disability.”

The question arises whether daycare centres are hiring workers with a special need in order to better connect with children who have the same needs.

“Would I hire someone because they present the same visual or non-visual needs? No,” Degroot said firmly.

“I hire someone based entirely upon their qualifications. If they had a special need and could do the job, we would, of course, hire them.”