Rural Child Care Project

              EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In the not so distant past when farm
families were bigger and farm
machinery was smaller a hired man was
a normal part of the family. Often there
was a hired woman too, certainly older
children to help with the baby and
maybe a live- in Grandma as well.
Those days are gone, Farmers can't
afford a hired man, the equipment is too
expensive and complex to trust to casual
labor, if there are any older children
they are in University, and Grandma
and Grandpa are probably still running
their own farm.
A l l this leaves a lot of gaps in the farm
labor force and more and more of these
gaps are being filled by farm women.
The children go along or are left
unsupervised.
The goal of the Alberta Rural Child
Care Pilot Project was to plan,
implement and evaluate a variety of
child care demonstration projects that
would meet the needs of farm families
in Alberta. Our hope was first, that we
could interest enough families in the
project to make it representative and
then, that the projects would be
innovative and resourceful and we
would learn something to pass on to
other interested groups.
We feel that we have been successful.
Interest was very high and requests for
applications came from all over the
Province. Because we wanted the
applicants to give us their ideas rather
than conform to what they thought we
expected, our application forms were
deliberately ambiguous. We established
a criteria for acceptance and no project
that met our deadline and criteria was
rejected. Our goal was 10 ( ten) projects,
we established 19 ( nineteen). Fourteen
( 14) of them continue to function
without our support.
We collected information from two
Workshop Luncheons and the written
evaluation that every participant was
required to submit. From this
information we conclude that Rural
Child Care is possible, that the need for
it is critical, that these needs vary
greatly depending upon circumstances,
and that no one method fits all
situations.
In the body of our report we identify 8
( eight) project types but the edges blur
somewhat and while no two projects
were exactly alike, all of them share
common traits. The projects that
flourished were those with strong
leadership, committed participants, a
generous list of care givers, accessibility
and a realistic budget. Our most viable
projects and several of those that
continue on their own are the ones that
moved into areas besides child care;
support groups, safety workshops,
parenting clinics, study groups and
social interaction.
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