Rural Child Care Project

              PURPOSE
As the need for rural child care has been
well established, our group did not
actively attempt to collect further
documentation in this area, however,
some information must be offered to
clarify the reasons for this project.
Farm families deal with seasonal work,
odd hours, peak times, emergency
situations and long or short days,
depending upon weather conditions.
Add to this huge, complicated,
expensive machinery, unpredictable
large animals and a declining farm
income that makes hiring help almost
impossible, and we have more and
more mothers in the farm labor force
and more and more children at risk.
Established Day Care Homes must plan
for the number of children that will be
with them on a regular basis and for
regular hours. If the established Day
Care is 40 miles away from the farm
and the grain is ready to combine at 7: 30
p. m., or a cow is calving at 5: 30 on
Sunday morning, the farm child will
have to be in the field or in the barn.
The purpose of this project was to
implement a variety of child care
programs whose operation would
provide information that might help
other farm families with similar needs.
We offered only partial funding,
payable at the close of the project,
because we wanted to encourage the
participation of people who were
willing to keep good records and write
a full evaluation.
We hoped that the various projects
would have the help and support of
their communities. In this we were
somewhat disappointed.
Although our primary goal was to
provide a safe environment for children
stress relief for parents was a
consideration as was the children's
socialization.
A very welcome benefit, and one that
we had not foreseen, was the emotional
and social support that the parents were
able to give each other within the
organized groups.
Alberta Rural Child Care Pilot Project
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