One-stop Access to Childcare Services

La Place 0-5 is a one-stop access point for educational childcare services.

For parents

La Place 0-5 provides an information and registration service that is used by parents to find childcare spaces. Parents may register their children with the childcare providers of their choice, and may also consult their files and monitor their applications. The services offered by La Place 0-5 are free of charge.

La Place 0-5 is not a waiting list. It is a platform that parents use to express their interest in registering their children with the childcare providers of their choice. Childcare providers then allocate spaces based on their admission policies and the number of spaces available to different age groups.

A parent who wishes to register a child with a recognized childcare service must first open an account at La Place 0-5 and then …

• Answer a series of questions designed to identify their childcare needs.
  
• Identify the recognized childcare services that interest them, based on their own needs.
  
• Consider the services and admission policies of the various childcare providers.
  

Register their child with the childcare centres and day care centres of interest to them, or, in the case of a home educational childcare service, contact the people responsible.

For recognized childcare providers

All childcare centres, subsidized day care centres, non-subsidized day care centres and home childcare providers¹ must join La Place 0-5 and must allocate spaces exclusively to parents who have signed up to the one-stop access service.

Allocation of available spaces by recognized childcare providers

Every childcare centre and daycare centre must …

• Assign available spaces using a list composed exclusively of children whose parents have expressed an interest in their establishment.
• Manage the allocation of available spaces independently, in compliance with their own admission policy, and based on their own particular organization and resources.
  
• Decide on the priority ranking of children based on their admission policy, the availability of spaces for each age group, and the date on which each child was registered (i.e. the date on which the child’s file was opened on La Place 0-5).
• Filter the list using a variety of criteria. Each childcare provider has full discretion to filter its own list as it wishes, meaning that parents will not necessarily be contacted in the order in which they registered.
• A child’s position on the lists of the various childcare service providers with which he or she is registered will differ and may change without notice.
• A childcare service cannot inform a parent of a child’s position on the list, since that position does not reflect either the length of the wait for a space or whether or not it will in fact be possible to obtain a space.

A child’s position on the lists of the various childcare service providers with which he or she is registered will differ and may change without notice.

A childcare service cannot inform a parent of a child’s position on the list, since that position does not reflect either the length of the wait for a space or whether or not it will in fact be possible to obtain a space.

A parent who believes that a childcare service provider has not followed its own admission policy may complain to the permit holder (the board of directors for a childcare centre or the owner in the case of a day care centre) or to the Ministère de la Famille.

Home educational childcare providers

• Home educational childcare providers are self-employed workers (Educational Childcare Act, s. 52) who have the managerial autonomy to select their clients. A home childcare provider is not required by the Act or by the regulations to have an admission policy.
  

¹Service providers in Indigenous territories are not required to use the one-stop access service.

Top of page