Daycare Reform Action Alliance

The Day Care Reform Action Alliance (composed of parents of young children, child care staff, program administrators, educators, board members of voluntary organizations, and members of community planning groups concerned with day care and the well-being of children and families) came together in 1974 with the goal of ensuring that all Ontario parents have access to supervised day care for their children and to ensure that all day care programs in Ontario provide quality care to the children using them.

At the same time, a newsletter, “Good Day Care!” was jointly produced by the Daycare Reform Action Alliance and the Group for Daycare Reform. Issues were edited by a collective including Maryann Kelly, Julie Mathien, Pat Redican, Mike Redican, Pat Schulz, and Margaret Young.

The Alliance focused much of its energies on fighting the “Birch Proposals” presented to the Legislature of Ontario by the Hon. Margaret Birth, Provincial Secretary for Social Development in June 1974. These proposals were an attempt to change Ontario’s licensing requirements to promote cheaper and lower quality day care in Ontario. They proposed reductions in required staff-child ratios; elimination of the requirements for formal qualifications for all staff but supervisors; elimination of the requirement that day cares have kitchens, and altering the requirements for physical standards.

Through lobbying and demonstrating, the Alliance successfully defeated the Birch Proposals and the Ontario standards.