BC's Childcare Crisis: When Experience Isn’t Enough

BC's Childcare Crisis: When Experience Isn’t Enough

Imagine spending your life caring for children and vulnerable people—babysitting as a kid, working as a nanny, providing home support, raising your own child, and even caring for people with severe brain injuries. Decades of experience. Skills honed in the real world. Yet in British Columbia, without an official Early Childhood Education (ECE) credential, you’re often barred from even applying for childcare jobs.

This isn’t just frustrating—it’s a systemic problem. The government funds online ECE courses, sure, but they require 2–3 years of training just to get into a job that barely covers rent and bills. Meanwhile, real-life caregivers are left out, and children and families suffer from a workforce shortage.

What’s worse, the rigid rules ignore the value of experience, compassion, and practical know-how. Post-COVID, the shortage has worsened, but the solution isn’t to force people through years of courses—they need a system that recognizes real skills and life experience.

We’re calling on policymakers, employers, and the public to wake up: the current ECE system in BC is failing both caregivers and the children who rely on them. Real experience should count. Skills learned in homes, classrooms, and through caregiving work should be recognized, not dismissed.

It’s time to rethink the rules. Time to value people over paperwork. Time to build a childcare system that works for those who actually do the work.

Share this. Talk about it. Demand change.