Regina parents of neurodivergent kids say there is a shortage of daycare facilities

A mother of a four-year-old autistic child says there's a shortage of daycare facilities for neurodivergent kids in Regina, leading to a risk of exploitation and discrimination.

Taniel Fiddler said she found a licensed subsidized $10-a-day day care spot for her son Hudson Fink and that everything "was fine until he was diagnosed" with autism.

Fiddler said the daycare owner texted her saying that for Fink to keep the spot they would need to up the fees to $600 a month and reduce the hours he could stay there. Fiddler said she was told that money was to be sent to the operator's personal bank account.

Fiddler complained to the Ministry of Education. She said the daycare later shrugged off the incident as a language barrier issue.

"The text was pretty clear to me. Send me $600 to my cash account, like to my personal e-mail. That's not a language barrier. That is full on exploitation," she said.

"Your kid has special needs. I can use this to get more money out of you. That was our first experience."

Fiddler said it's impossible to find daycares in Regina, licensed or unlicensed, that provide educational assistants (EAs). She said daycares have to apply for the EA grant money, but often the onus is put on parents.

"Even with the EA grant, daycares can hire whoever they want. They don't need to have any education behind them. It's not a really well-thought out program," he said. "It's so unorganized but so needed."

Fiddler said she pulled Fink from that daycare in September of last year and enrolled him in a preschool through the province's Early Learning Intensive Support (ELIS) Program, which supports young children who require intensive support.

"We were stuck now trying to find family members to watch him in the morning while we went to work," she said.

"If he was part of the daycare, they would have done the drop off and the pickup.… but since then we had to basically enlist grandmas, aunties, cousins, sisters, everybody to help us out, because we have to work like everybody's got to work."

She said she then found an unlicensed daycare for Fink earlier this year, but it was in the operator's basement.

"There was no space. He needs to be able to remove himself from the chaos, from other kids, from the noise, and he couldn't do that there. He was overstimulated, unregulated. It just wasn't ideal."

Fink stayed there until April, then it was back to depending on family members to provide that care, a privilege Fiddler said is not available to many families.