| Faculty: | Early Childhood Education |
| Field of Study: | Child Care and Support Services Management
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| Description: | The Family Child Care certificate program provides training for people who want to provide care for young children in a home setting. People who are currently providing child care are also welcome to take the program. Because of the variety of child care arrangements being offered in the community, this program provides training for family child care providers as well as nannies and parent aides. These are the people who provide care in a home-setting for small groups of young children. In the summer of 1988, UCFV conducted a survey of family child care providers to help determine the educational interests and needs of individuals providing in-home care for young children in the UCFV region. In 1993 UCFV wrote the provincial curriculum for all B.C. Colleges. The B.C. Child Care Facilities Act (1978) defines family childcare as “The provision, in a home environment of child care, including an opportunity for social, emotional, physical and intellectual growth, for children from birth to school age.”
The Provincial Act regulates the physical conditions under which a family childcare can operate. Trained providers give potential consumers of this form of childcare the reassurance they need, in order to carefully select the type of care they desire. With well-trained family childcare providers, children can be cared for in their own neighbourhoods, in their own home, or near a parent’s workplace, in groups up to seven children, at reasonable cost. At present there is a critical lack of licensed and available child care spaces. |