Connect for Kids » News

Bad deal for ‘Generation Squeeze’

kids — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:50:04 +0000

Business pays a steep price for higher absenteeism among employees with young children

By Paul Kershaw, Vancouver Sun October 24, 2011

Last week I wrote about Occupy Wall Street, observing that the slogan “We are the 99 per cent” frames the growing inequality in Canada as a few fat cat corporate leaders gorging on the cream produced by many mice churning milk. While this insight rightly illuminates some systemic problems with the distribution of income in our country and around the globe, I think it wrongly caricatures many individual business leaders today.

As readers of this column will know, I’ve been calling for Canadians to rally behind policy changes in support of the generation raising young kids because it is squeezed for time at home, squeezed for income after housing, and squeezed for services like child care (see blogs.ubc.ca/newdealforfamilies). A number of Canada’s business elite have lent their reputations to similar recommendations in the past, because they recognize the societal value of policy change, and because they can make a business case for such investments.

Take people like Warren Beach, CFO of Sierra Systems, Debi Hewson, CEO of Odlum Brown, Yuri Fulmer, CEO of FDC Capital Partners, and Catherine Warren, President of FanTrust Entertainment Strategies. Far from caricatured fat cats, these corporate leaders are some of the hardest working citizens I know, volunteering countless hours to a number of philanthropic boards and fundraising campaigns, including the United Way where I met them. At the United Way of the Lower Mainland, they don’t just use their influence to raise money for programs that support families with kids and isolated seniors. They also lend their voices, encouraging Canadians to prioritize public policy to prevent social problems, rather than treat problems after the fact.

Part of their motivation, I suspect, is the business community already pays a price for the status quo. Employees with young kids bring their time and service squeeze to their jobs. The result is higher absenteeism rates for this group of employees, greater turnover, and increased use of extended health benefits – all of which employers pay for.

For a couple of years, I’ve been using some of my research time at the University of B.C. to provide evidence that the squeeze on the generation raising young kids costs the Canadian business community billions. After giving a number of presentations where business colleagues smiled, nodded gently, but resisted engaging, I approached Warren Beach at Sierra Systems, asking whether he believed my findings?” A no BS kind of guy, Warren replied “As a CA, I’ve seen many people inflate estimates, so I’m skeptical.” But as a stalwart citizen, remaining skeptical wasn’t an option for Warren. Instead, he agreed to devote some of his time, and the time of two CA colleagues, to support my team in refining the estimates.

In the light of Warren’s analysis, he is now a believer, suggesting my research team is likely conservative when estimating that “work-life conflict among employees with preschool age children costs the Canadian business community in excess of $4 billion annually. These costs include absenteeism, employee turnover, and health care premiums.”

Take absenteeism as a starter. Average full-time wages in Canada mean the typical employee earns $213 a day. The employer is out this wage when an employee uses a sick day or is otherwise away from work because of work-life conflict. On top of the wage, there is the daily cost for extended benefits that employers pay, which is conservatively another 10 per cent of salary, or $21.

When someone is absent, colleagues have to fill in, and supervisors take time from what they would have otherwise done in order to manage the unexpected human resource gap. Plus, the company forgoes the profits it expected to earn on whatever labour doesn’t get performed. Together, colleagues’ lost productivity and the company’s lost return on investment in employee wages add up to another 60-65 per cent of the average daily wage, or $128-$138.

This means the total employer cost when an employee misses a day due to work-life conflict is around $370 on average ($213 + $21 + $128-$138).

So how often do people miss days because of work-life conflict? In B.C., there are 265,000 employees with preschool children. Their time, income and service squeeze means they miss three to 3.6 more days per year because of their high levels of work-life conflict compared to people who report less of a squeeze. These data come from Statistics Canada and research from Linda Duxbury and Chris Higgins at the Sprott and Ivey Schools of Business respectively – both of whom are leading researchers about work-life balance.

The 265,000 employees multiplied by 3-3.6 days per year is between 795,000 and 954,000 days lost to absenteeism in our province annually. At a cost of $370 per day, that adds up to between $300-$356 million annually – just in B.C., and just for employees with kids under age six.

Given B.C. is only 13 per cent of the Canadian population, we’re talking about $2.3 billion nationally.

That’s the price paid by the Canadian business community for otherwise avoidable absenteeism among the generation raising young kids. (And that’s before we consider other costs, like avoidable employee turnover and health care premiums, which I will consider in future columns).

To put this annual $2.3 billion price in context, Ottawa invested $2.2 billion in stimulus spending in the second year of its Economic Action Plan to support adjustment and secure job opportunities in regions and industries most affected by the economic downturn. Clearly, the magnitude of the absenteeism price tag is a significant drain on our economy.

Rather than waste $2.3 billion each year on avoidable absenteeism, might the business community not spend this money more productively, both for its own profitability, and for the good of society?

I think so.

There is no doubt the New Mom and Dad Benefits, $10/day child care and Flex-Time that I propose as part of a New Deal for Families will impact employers. But it’s less about new costs, and more about replacing unproductive expenditures for more productive human resource practices and social policy investments.

The Surrey Board of Trade will host a Business Summit October 25 that focuses on the costs of work-life conflict.

As a member organization, it deserves credit for showing leadership on what it will take to put families first as part of our country’s social and economic strategy.

Such leadership is not the activity of corporate fat cats.

It’s sound thinking on the part of smart business people who are solid citizens.

Paul Kershaw is the Human Early Learning Partnership scholar of social care, citizenship and the determinants of health at the University of B.C.

UNICEF Report Card: Children Left Behind

kids — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:32:04 +0000

Excerpt from the press release:

A landmark report by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Report Card 9: The Children Left Behind, has found that children in many rich nations suffer greater inequality than children in other industrialized nations. Canada performs at a mediocre level overall, but lags far behind in equality of children’s material well-being which includes family income and other basic resources and conditions necessary for child development — placing 17th of 24 countries.

Report Card 9: The Children Left Behind ranks, for the first time, 24 OECD countries in terms of equality in children’s health, education and material well-being. The report looks at a particular aspect of disparity – bottom-end inequality – and asks how far behind affluent nations allow their most disadvantaged children to fall.

The approach of The Children Left Behind is to measure the gap between the average child (what a country may consider ‘normal’) and the child near the bottom. As such, the report examines how far children are falling behind in three dimensions of their lives – material well-being, educational achievement and physical health – and means we can measure and compare, for the first time, the differences in performance both within and between countries.

Excerpt from the child care section of the Report Card:

Within the developed world, trends in the way in which young children are being brought up may now offer a unique opportunity to put this message into practice. Today’s generation of children is becoming the first in which a majority are spending a significant part of early childhood in some form of out-of-home care (the subject of Report Card 8xlv). In theory, this offers a large scale opportunity to take early action against the different dimensions of disadvantage that threaten to become established in the lives of very young children. Public demand for high-quality child care already exists, and OECD governments are already responding by investing in free or subsidized early childhood services on an increasing scale.

….

In practice, there is a danger that the child care transition will contribute to a widening rather than a narrowing of bottom-end inequality. It is more educated parents and higher-income homes that tend to be most aware of,and more capable of affording, child care of the right quality. And it is the poorer and less educated homes where the pressures for the earliest possible return to work are felt most acutely and where resources for high quality child care are least likely to be available. Without specific policies to address this issue — and to ensure the availability and affordability of high quality early childhood services for all children — this opportunity will therefore be lost; ‘double disadvantage’ will become the norm, and the child care transition will likely become a new and powerful driver of still greater inequality in children’s well-being.

The costs of taking advantage of this chance to reduce inequalities in children’s well-being on a significant scale are obviously substantial. The costs of not taking the opportunity will undoubtedly be even higher. No one who has worked with disadvantaged or at-risk children can be in any doubt that, as James Heckman and many others have argued, attempting to compensate for disadvantage after the event is more difficult, more costly, and less likely to be successful. Children need to be supported and protected from avoidable ‘falling behind’ at all stages of their development, but the point of greatest leverage is the point at which the process begins.

report

Posting date: 3 Dec 10

You’re Probably Not Expecting A Child to Run into Traffic

kids — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:53:26 +0000

Vancouver BC – Marking the back-to-school term, Preventable, BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation and the District of West Vancouver are launching Canada’s first 3D illusion geared to making drivers slow down at high-risk intersections.

The 3D illusion of a small girl chasing a ball has been installed for one week, on the road northbound at 22^nd street in West Vancouver. There is a sign leading up to it saying “you’re probably not expecting kids to run out on the road”. This intersection is a high-risk area, as it is a main connector between Highway 1 and Marine Drive and also located near a busy school, Ecole Pauline Johnson.

The biggest risk to children in school zones are parents who continue to make U-turns, stop in no-stopping zones, back up into crosswalks, roll through stop signs, ignore the school safety patrollers, let their children out from the driver’s side and into oncoming traffic and speed. This 3D illusion reminds us to shift our attitudes, and drive as though you’d expect a child to run into traffic.

WHEN: Tuesday September 7, 2010

TIME: 10.30am

WHERE: Ecole Pauline Johnson Elementary School

1150, 22nd Street, West Vancouver
(Meet in front of school, on 22^nd Street)

David Dunne, Director of the Traffic Safety Foundation and spokesperson for Preventable, District of West Vancouver mayor Pam Goldsmith-Jones, school principal David Langmuir and representatives from the District of West Vancouver will be on site and available for interviews, to discuss this initiative, road safety and preventable injuries.

Summer in the Parks with WHEELS!

kids — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:10:27 +0000

The WHEELS mobile “Summer in the Parks” program is an opportunity for families with young children to gather information about early childhood learning and care, parent support, health and wellness and cultural support from participating North Shore agencies and organizations.

Tuesdays, 5:30 pm -7:30 pm

Mahon Park (16^th and Jones, NV)

July 6 & July 20; August 10 & 24

St. Andrews Park (11^th and St. Georges, NV)

July 13; August 17 & 31

Wednesdays, 10:00 am-12:00 pm

John Lawson Park (Bellevue & 17^th WV)

July 7, 14, 21; August 11, 18, 25

Thursdays, 11:30 am-1:30 pm

Cates Park (Dollarton Highway @ 4000 Block

July 8,15, 22; August 12, 19, 26,

Preventing Children’s “Wheel-based” Head Injuries

kids — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:58:26 +0000

“Wheeled” accidents a leading Cause of Serious Head Injury

The leading cause of serious injury and death to kids on wheels is head injuries. These can occur during wheeled-activities like bicycling, in-line skating, scootering and skateboarding. Even seemingly minor head injuries may result in permanent brain damage.

A helmet could save your child’s life!

Why children are most at-risk

Children are most likely to suffer injuries because they are just learning to ride, go too fast, lack traffic safety skills, ride near traffic, have a tendency to attempt stunts and difficult moves and/or do not use safety gear.

Helmets are Important!

A properly fitted helmet helps protect your child’s brain in a crash or fall. A head injury can permanently change the way a child walks, talks, plays, and thinks. The human skull is just one centimeter thick. A properly fitted and correctly worn helmet can cut the risk of serious head injury by up to 85 per cent. This means four out of five brain injuries could be prevented, if every person on wheels wore a helmet.

Parents should wear bike helmets aswell!
You are your child’s best role model. Everyone should wear a helmet when they ride, as everyone is at risk.

Effective Legislation
Legislation requiring cyclists and other persons on wheels to wear helmets has been shown to be highly effective in having more children and adults wear helmets. If more children wear helmets, there will be fewer injuries.

Importance of wearing the correct helmet

All helmets are not the same! There are different helmets for different activities. Each type is made to protect the head from the impacts common to a particular activity or sport. Look for the CPSC, CSA, ASTM or Snell certification on the helmet or box.

Multi-sport helments

Some helmets are multi-sport. This means that the helmet meets safety standards for more than one activity. Be sure the helmet you buy shows clearly what activity or activities it has been tested for.

Fitting the helmet

It is very important that the helmet properly fits your child. The helmet should rest two finger widths above the eyebrow. The side straps should be snug, with the buckles right under the ears. The chin strap should be tightened until you can only fit one finger between the strap and your child’s chin. Have your child shake his/her head from side to side and from front to back – the helmet should NOT move around. Teach your child to fit his/her own helmet each time he/she rides!

This information is provided by Safe Kids Canada and can be found online at:

http://www.safekidscanada.ca/SKCForParents/section.asp?s=Safety%2BInformation%2Bby%2BTopic&sID=10774&ss=Wheeled%2BActivities&ssID=11341

For further information on preventing head and other injuries:

Think First – Brain injury facts, province-specific legislation info, sport-specific safety tips http://www.thinkfirst.ca/safetyinfo.aspx

Kid Safe Alberta – Several resources on bicycle safety, helmet use, helmet fitting http://www.capitalhealth.ca/YourHealth/Campaigns/KidSAFE/More+Information?id=10&KE_NAME=Bicycle%20Safety&type=4

The Community Against Preventable Injuries – Articles, blog, video clips on injury prevention

http://www.preventable.ca

North Shore after-school programming supported through North Shore Community Foundation

kids — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:55:54 +0000

The North Shore Community Foundation, through the Mayors’ Golf Tournament Fund Raiser, has committed $50,000 to the North Shore Middle Childhood Matters Planning Table (MCM). These funds are dedicated to providing recreational after-school programming to pre-teens in both North and West Vancouver. Research conducted through United Way of the Lower Mainland has identified the considerable need for vulnerable pre-teens to be engaged in positive, active and supervised programs in their after school hours. MCM, supported primarily by the United Way of the Lower mainland and Ministry of Children and Family Development, has worked closely with the school districts, municipalities and recreation commissions to pilot after-school programming in several North Shore schools. These programs are not a child care option, but rather provide opportunities for developing strong social relationships with peers and mentoring adults in a recreational format. With the additional funds from the North Shore Community Foundation, MCM will extend this one afternoon per week opportunity to 14 additional schools over the next two years.

Why Child Care Matters – CFUW Forum in North Vancouver

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:08:20 +0000

On March 29, the Canadian Federation of University Women are presenting a forum on child care on the North Shore, featuring Dr. Paul Kershaw of Human Early Learning Partnership and Jean Bennett, Dean of Capilano University’s Faculty of Health and Education.

The event takes place at Highlands United Church, 3255 Edgemont Boulevard from 7:30 – 9:30 pm. The event is free, but please register by contacting cfuwnorthshore@shaw.ca or 604-924-0121.