Toronto Women’s City Alliance pursued, among other things, two items on the agenda of the Community Development and Recreation Committee’s January 2014 meeting. One was the Youth Equity Strategy and the other was Measuring the Impact of Childcare Fee Subsidies.

With regard to the Youth Equity Strategy, TWCA urged the committee to use gender-sensitive planning in the implementation of the Strategy, in order to gain a thorough understanding of the needs of female, male, and LGBTQ youth. TWCA’s letter to the Committee may be viewed on our blog. At its February 2014 meeting, City Council passed the Committee’s recommendation and requested that “the Executive Director, Social Development, Finance and Administration to report to the Community Development and Recreation Committee on outcomes of the Toronto Youth Equity Strategy using data that is disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, income, and ability, where appropriate, to identify inequities and systemic disparities faced by youth most vulnerable to involvement in serious violence and crime.” We are pleased to mark this policy success! Hopefully, it will pave the way for a gender lens to become the norm in policy design and evaluation. TWCA will continue to monitor how the Youth Equity Strategy is implemented and unfolds, and how gender-disaggregated data is collected and utilized.

City Council also approved the initiation of research to measure the impact of childcare fee subsidies. Specifically, City Council authorized “the Children’s Services Division to enter into a contract with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto for a five-year project to enhance and quantify the evidence base supporting the impacts of child care fee subsidy on children, families, financial partners and the greater economy.” At a time when the waiting list for subsidized daycare exceeds 18,000 names, this is a welcome development. Families on low incomes, particularly single mothers, are in urgent need of affordable daycare options. TWCA’s correspondence with the Committee can be viewed on our blog.  Children’s Services is in the midst of re-structuring the childcare system here in Toronto, and TWCA has been a part of the consultation process.  We will follow both the study and the re-design of the childcare system with interest.