Planning and Data

As the designated service system manager for the Wellington service delivery area, the County of Wellington is responsible for planning and managing child care and early years services that respond to the needs of children and families across the County of Wellington and the City of Guelph.

In addition, through coordination support for the Growing Great Generations (GGG) Planning Table and the GGG Birth-Six Working Group, Children’s Early Years Division provides staff resources needed to facilitate on-going collaboration and integrated planning of services for children and youth up to age 18 among children’s services partners.

Please see the various sections below for reports, data, and other information from the Research and Planning team.

Planning for Child Care and Early Years Services

The 2023-2027 Child Care Service Plan includes how we are transitioning licensed child care into a high quality early learning and child care system. There are Child Care and Early Years (including Best Start) service plans from 2000 to now. Please contact us for a copy of older service plans. The Wellington Directed Growth Plan is an addendum to the Child Care and Early Years Service Plan 2023-2027. The Directed Growth Plan presents current licensed child care coverage and population characteristics for each of the municipalities within Wellington-Guelph.

The Economic Value of Child Care report describes how high quality, publicly funded, licensed child care helps families and the economy in our area. For more information about the importance of high-quality licensed child care, please visit the Children's Early Years webpages below.
Child Care Counts
Early Years Matter

Data

Licensed Child Care Space Data
Table 1. Number of child care spaces and access rate by age group and municipality.

MunicipalityChildren Ages Birth up to 4 YearsChildren Ages 4-5 YearsChildren Ages 6-12 Years
# of Child Care spacesAccess Rate# of Child Care spacesAccess Rate# of Child Care spacesAccess Rate
Centre Wellington 214 16.5% 156 21.1% 180 7.0%
Erin 145 34.9% 88 39.1% 120 13.8%
Guelph 1,916 32.6% 801 25.3% 1,171 10.3%
Guelph/Eramosa 178 36.0% 26 9.1% 60 5.1%
Mapleton 16 2.1% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
Minto 57 12.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
Puslinch 16 7.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
Wellington North 58 8.9% 26 8.8% 30 2.7%
Wellington service delivery area 2,600 25.5% 1,097 20.0% 1,561 7.9%

Note. Access rates refer to the number of licensed child care spaces available for each age group (birth to age 4, ages 4-5, ages 6-12) as a proportion of the number of children who live in each area. Child care spaces include all licensed full-time and part-time spaces. Statistics Canada, 2021 Census of Population; County of Wellington Licensed Child Care database, as of June 30, 2023. 

Population Data
Population data is collected from Statistics Canada (see Table 2). See the links below for other Statistics Canada reports on child care and early years services. 

Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services, 2022

Survey on Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements, 2022

Before and after school care in Canada, 2022

Table 2. Breakdown of population data by age group and municipality. 

MunicipalityMunicipal PopulationChildren Ages Birth up to 4 YearsChildren Ages 4-5 YearsChildren Ages 6-12 Years
Child Population% of Municipal PopulationChild Population% of Municipal PopulationChild Population% of Municipal Population
Centre Wellington 31,093 1,300 4.2% 740 2.4% 2,560 8.2%
Erin 11,981 415 3.5% 225 1.9% 870 7.3%
Guelph 143,740 5,875 4.1% 3,165 2.2% 11,315 7.9%
Guelph/Eramosa 13,904 495 3.6% 285 2.0% 1,175 8.5%
Mapleton 10,839 755 7.0% 420 3.9% 1,345 12.4%
Minto 9,094 475 5.2% 225 2.5% 845 9.3%
Puslinch 7,944 230 2.9% 120 1.5% 575 7.2%
Wellington North 12,431 655 5.3% 295 2.4% 1,120 9.0%
Wellington service delivery area 241,026 10,200 4.2% 5,475 2.3% 19,805 8.2%

 
Community Engagement
 2019 Early Years community engagement:
Community Planning
  • Growing Great Generations is a collaborative planning initiative of community health and social service organizations and groups who engage in system-level planning to strengthen and align services and supports for all children, youth and their families in the Wellington service delivery area. Action is achieved by leveraging our knowledge and resources to improve services and supports for children, youth and their families.
    • Birth to Six Working Group is a partnership of organizations making it easier for families to access community-based services and supports for children prenatal to age 6 in Wellington and Guelph.

  • The Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Report Card Coalition collects data and creates reports about health and well-being indicators for children and youth in our area. View the latest data and reports through the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Report Cards on the Well-Being of Children.

  • Inclusive Early Childhood Service System project - the County of Wellington, Children's Early Years Division is a partner in a Toronto Metropolitan University research study that is asking families of children with disabilities about their experiences with inclusive early childhood services. For the latest updates from the study visit the Inclusive Early Childhood Service System website. 

Resources

County of Wellington

Provincial

© 2023 County of Wellington, 74 Woolwich St. Guelph, Ontario N1H 3T9, T 519.837.2600, TF 1.800.663.0750, F 519.837.1909