State supports one-time day care expenses - $561 per child for middle and low-income families Working Parents Benefit, $108 million injected

The state will inject $108 million to pay one-time childcare costs to middle- and low-income parents.
"The Working Parents Benefit will help ease the cost of child care for millions of Alberta families," said Rebecca Schultz, Minister of Children's Services for the provincial Department of Children's Services on Monday. At a time when everything is unstable due to the pandemic, we want to lighten the hearts of working parents by supporting the cost of day care. We plan to pay $561 per child for middle and low-income families.”

“The WPB will be a major contributor to Alberta's economic recovery,” she said. We believe this will have the effect of allowing parents to return to work while reinvesting in child care.”
The state is looking at families earning less than $100,000 per year to qualify for payments, and estimates that about 192,000 children will benefit.

Minister Schultz said, “Currently, the average monthly childcare cost for full-day regular day care in Alberta is around $900. The purpose of WPB is to support working parents for low- and middle-income families.”
The UCP state government stopped funding the $25 a day child care program that the NDP started as a pilot project last summer. “This program costs $1 billion a year,” Schultz said. However, many parents still opt for non-licensed day care, so we need to respect that,” he said, explaining the reason behind the suspension of funding for the pilot program.
“With the pandemic, a lot of day care is Closing the door resulted in a situation where working parents had nowhere to leave their children. The state is supporting the reopening of day care and family homes. Reliable and affordable child care is also part of Alberta's economic recovery plan."
To qualify for WPB, you must be able to submit receipts for at least three months of day care expenses during the period from April 1 to December 31 of the previous year. Eligible parents can apply by March 31 and must first create a Myalberta Digital ID when applying. (Reporter Seo Deok-soo)