Child care in Quebec: access to a universal program.

BACKGROUND Five cycles of data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (1994/5-2002/3) were used to examine patterns of child care use in Quebec and the rest of Canada to explore the impact of Quebec's implementation of universal child care. METHODS Rates of overall use as well as use of regulated (child care centre, family child care) and non-regulated care (sitter, nanny, relative, family child care) were examined for preschoolers aged 0-5 years in Quebec as compared to the other provinces and by family household income. Chi-square tests were used to examine significance of differences. RESULTS Since the implementation of Quebec's child care program, Quebec demonstrated substantial increases in child care use, particularly in the use of regulated care (from 10% prior to program compared to 30% by 2002) whereas the use of unregulated care did not demonstrate a significant increase in Quebec as compared to the other provinces (1994 to 2002). Furthermore, the use of regulated care by low-income families was greater in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada, although the greatest increase in use of regulated care was for children from high-income families. CONCLUSION Findings suggest that since the introduction of Quebec's universal child care program, there was an increase in the use of regulated child care for families of preschool-aged children in the province, although by 2002 Quebec had not achieved the coverage of universal child care programs attained by many European countries.