The school service center (CSS) De La Jonquière, in Saguenay, is taking great measures to try to compensate for the lack of staff in schools and daycare services.
The organization now provides training for elementary school seniors so that they can stay home alone and give employees a break.
“In some child care services, the situation is really not ideal. We won’t be able to hold that by the holidays,” noted Stéphanie Audet, communications advisor for the CSS De La Jonquière.
“We have decided to offer the “Ready to be Alone” training to all of our 5th and 6th grade students who attend the Daycare,” continued Ms. Audet.
The training is carried out in partnership with the Red Cross.
“We want to work in collaboration with our parents. In other words, we want to involve them in the solutions. We want parents to take the time to talk with their children to prepare them to stay alone at home, ”explained the director general of CSS De La Jonquière, Sébastien Malenfant.
The training will be offered free of charge on weekends to the students concerned, accompanied by their parents.
“The parent has the choice between face-to-face or remotely. It is given in the evenings and on weekends, so it is very accessible for parents and students, ”said Stéphanie Audet.
The objective is to equip the child to allow him to keep himself at home in order to reduce the number of registrations in childcare services to avoid possible closures, which will be inevitable if the lack of manpower work continues to grow.
“What you have to understand is that at the CSS De La Jonquière, we have experienced service breakdowns in recent years and we have heard the parents, the dissatisfaction. We understand that it has a big impact on their family life, their management. When we sat down, we said to ourselves “we must take action to avoid this, to try to push it back if possible”, mentioned the communications manager.
The De La Jonquière School Service Center is constantly looking for educators to fill vacant positions in its elementary schools.
“We would like to find another 15 people to try to be in balance with our ratios in daycare services,” admitted the general manager.
Hélène Bourgeois, a daycare technician for 40 years, has seen the number of educators decrease more and more over the years.
“It’s the stress of not being able to fill, of not being able to meet the needs. Because basically, when we started 25 years ago, if there were 400 students at school, we should have been able to meet this demand, which we can no longer do now,” she said.
“Our staff, we have to take care of them. We saw contingency plans last year linked to COVID, people gave a lot,” noted Mr. Malenfant.
This is the first CSS in the region to offer free training to 5th and 6th grade students with their parents.
“It can only help us. Relieve parents of the stress of no longer being able to take their child, increase the possibility of having more staff available and adjusting over the years. Maybe it won’t last forever, but I think it’s a very good solution,” noted Ms. Bourgeois.
The CSS De La Jonquière also launched a pilot project last year in four of its primary schools to assess the receptivity of parents. The results were conclusive.
“We still had 91% students who participated. We did an analysis of the data and we observe that more than 50% of these students are not currently in our daycare services, ”rejoiced Sébastien Malenfant. “We hope to reach all parents with this. We are currently talking regarding nearly 300 students who are likely to take the training. I think that just starting the discussion with the child and ruminating on this idea a little can be good in the end for the service center, because each presence can make a difference in our communities,” added Stéphanie Audet.
The trainings will begin on September 24 and will continue until October. Other dates may be added along the way. The parents concerned were to receive an email with the procedure to follow on Wednesday or at the latest on Thursday.