To assist employees in obtaining information on child care options (other than federally funded workplace day care centres) that will help them manage work and family responsibilities.
The employer supports the provision of information and referral services on child care, for employees who are parents, where such services are needed in lieu of or as a complement to federally funded workplace day care centres.
This policy applies to all departments and other portions of the Public Service listed in Part I of Schedule I of the Public Service Staff Relations Act.
Departments which offer information and referral services for child care must do so with reference to the needs of their work force.
Departments must fund the costs of implementing and maintaining information and referral services for child care from existing budgets.
Departments must ensure that information and referral services for child care are confined to the provision of such services, with no endorsements and with legal disclaimers of liability.
Departments will implement appropriate methods to monitor the application of this policy and provide the Treasury Board Secretariat with their findings upon request.
These findings could reflect the scope of the services provided, the implementation approach selected by the department (in-house program or fee-for-use contract - sole department or consortium of departments), number of employees using the services as well as their group and level, costs incurred by the department, comments and observations.
Information and referral services for child care are services which identify diversified sources of, and options for child care, from which clients can select what best suits their needs. Such services can include: lists of available child care programs; individualized consultations; workplace parent education seminars and supervisory training in dealing with work and family related issues.
Workplace day care centres (TBM Human resources volume, chapter 4-2)
Enquiries about this policy should be referred to the responsible departmental officers who, in turn, may direct questions to:
Workplace day care policy analyst
General Personnel Policy Development and Compensation Division
Personnel Policy Branch
Treasury Board Secretariat
Research indicates that one factor that demonstrably reduces the apparent conflict between family and work is the provision of information and referral services. Treasury Board therefore encourages departments to develop information and referral services for child care. Departments are authorized to allot funds from existing budgets for information and referral services for child care as per Sections 11 & 12 of the Financial Administration Act. This guide briefly describes information and referral services and outlines issues which departments might consider in order to evaluate whether or not to pursue the initiative.
2. DefinitionInformation and referral services identify sources of child care for employees. Such services can include for example, data banks of child care programs, arranging individualized consultations, organizing workplace parent education seminars and providing supervisory training in dealing with work and family issues in the workplace.
3. Scope of information and referral servicesTypes of service
Depending on the needs identified by its work force, the department must decide whether the services to be offered will include a data bank for employees, with search and retrieval capabilities exclusively, or if referral services (i.e. names of care providers and consulting services) will be offered in addition to a data bank.
Licensed care and-or unlicensed care
The department must decide whether the information and referral services will offer licensed or unlicensed services or both. Users who prefer to use licensed care arrangements regard licensing as a form of consumer protection, since licensed centres are government-supervised, thus ensuring that minimum standards are being met. Provincial licensing requirements, training and qualifications of staff, program design and physical layout are some of the specifics that protect consumers who decide to use licensed care.
Other users may, however, decide to use unlicensed care facilities which are generally less expensive than licensed facilities and, in some locations, may be the only option available. The department should inform employees that unlicensed care facilities do not necessarily meet minimum provincial standards and are not required to do so. Therefore no information is available on the minimum standard of quality of care assured by unlicensed care facilities.
When providing information and referral services, the department must make it clear to employees that these services comprise only listings of available care facilities and resources. It is the individual employee and not the department, who selects the care provider. The department may choose to provide employees with a guide to visiting a day care facility, outlining some of the quality indicators to look for. The department may obtain guides of this nature from provincial government day care services.
If the department decides to offer information and referral services to employees, whether licensed or unlicensed, the liability associated with each type of arrangement should be fully researched.
Providers of service
The department may choose to organize the delivery of information and referral services in a variety of ways. The following table is meant to reflect the possible combinations.
In house Service | Fee for service | |
---|---|---|
Departmental consortia | OPTION 1 | OPTION 2 |
Single department | OPTION 3 | OPTION 4 |
Departments that form a consortium model share the workload, costs and risks involved. This arrangement may vary depending on the type of service desired, the number of employees to be served and existing community services. Examples of an in-house program and a fee-for-service contract are provided in section 8 of this guide.
4. Features of information and referral servicesInformation regarding the following types of child care services can be provided to employees:
Accommodations
Temporary care
Counselling services
Programs for children with special needs
Home support services
Workshops
This list is not intended to be exhaustive. For example, information and referral services for child care may also:
Employees benefit by receiving:
Employers benefit from:
5. Advantages and disadvantages of implementing information and referral services
When compared to the development of other employer supported child care options, information and referral services present the following advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages
Disadvantages
6. Assessing need for child care
Conducting an assessment of employees' needs will assist managers in deciding on the scope of the information and referral services. Before proceeding with any needs assessment, it would be useful to obtain information on currently available community services on child care from provincial governments.
Data can be gathered from employees through written questionnaires, telephone surveys or personal interviews. Additional information can be gathered about the departmental work force through the personnel management systems already in place. Following are examples of relevant information:
Personal information:
age, gender, home location, family income, marital status
Job information:
working arrangements and hours, compressed schedule, overtime requirements, job locations, group and level, travel requirements
Family related information:
ages of dependents, current care arrangements, care preferences-requirements, problems locating care sources
Work/Family conflicts:
emergency provisions, family-related leave
This section is designed to help departments anticipate the range of issues that may arise if they pursue the initiative to develop and to implement information and referral services.
The following is a partial checklist of the questions departments may come across.
Example A
The Great West Life Assurance Company in Winnipeg, Manitoba offers an information, education, referral and counselling service to its 2300 employees. The family support service offered to employees is an in-house service developed and operated by the employer.
The Great-West Life Assurance Company provides the following to employees:
Example B
International Business Machines (IBM Boston) is a national company that provides a third party information and referral service for its 260,000 U.S. based employees. This service is contracted out to Work/Family Directions (Boston), a consulting firm that develops multi-site referral services for companies by coordinating services through local child care agencies.
The following is a description of the scope and types of services offered by a fee-for-service agency and is intended to give departments an idea of what can be made available through such an organization.
When using the resource and referral service, parents are given a child care handbook and information on:
Parents also receive:
The child care service also gives parents three referrals with confirmed vacancies. Referrals are only to licensed child care. When licensed family day care is not available, the child care service applies standards approved by Work/Family directions.
9. References