Over the past twenty years, early learning and child care has experienced a surge of policy attention in industrialized countries. Author Martha Friendly evaluates the current and future early learning and child care situation in Saskatchewan in the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy’s 36th Public Policy Paper entitled "Early Learning and Child Care in Saskatchewan: Past, Present and Future". She uses the key policy issues of access, quality and financing to place early learning and child care (ELCC) in Saskatchewan in the overall Canadian context.

Friendly argues that ensuring consistently high quality and wide accessibility in ELCC programs requires a carefully designed, high quality early learning and child care system. The paper identifies the elements of such a system and then offers suggestions to help Saskatchewan begin to meet the principles committed to as the basis for the early learning and child care program. Further, Friendly asserts that ELCC for Canada as a whole lags far behind that of many other countries, and that within Canada, provincial/territorial provision of ELCC programs is unevenly developed. For example, Saskatchewan’s provision is particularly underdeveloped in the area of regulated child care.

Author(s)

Martha Friendly