By: Folashade Adetuyi
In 2019, Carmen Doucette became a mother for the first time when she welcomed her baby girl Peyton. Reflecting on that time, she said, “I was on a 12-month maternity leave, like most women are, and I just assumed, cause I didn’t know, that like near the end of my leave, I would be able to just get childcare. Like I wasn’t on any waitlists— I knew nothing.”
During this time, she considered quitting her job to care for her child, despite her household running on two incomes. It wasn’t until a friend suggested exploring home daycare options or searching Facebook groups for availability that she discovered alternative solutions.
“So that’s what I did in 2020, but it was extremely stressful, and not ideal,” she said.
When she had her second baby girl Harper in 2021, she found herself facing the same challenge. This time, she began to wonder if there was a better way. “As a parent, I knew I wasn’t the only one dealing with this, there is a childcare crisis in Canada—a huge shortage of childcare available spaces.”
According to Statistics Canada report shows that more parents are having difficulty finding childcare than before the CWELCC program (36% in 2019 vs 49% in 2023). The same report found that 26% of children not in childcare are on at least one waiting list, again, an increase since 2019.
Doucette recognized the issue and decided to address it herself.
Determined to make a difference, Doucette started looking into the idea of providing childcare for parents in May of 2023.
“I should do something about this, if I did, what would that look like? It will be an online platform, like an app,” she said. “I spent several months doing a lot of research, a lot of research, just about the industry and I was surveying parents, I was surveying daycare providers, I was doing just lot of the needy greedy for several several months.”
By January 2024, with guidance from HELIX, Seneca’s innovation incubator, she started the development of Her Yes Club, a website that helps parents connect with childcare providers, offering free, unlimited access to listings.
“It’s an online platform that really serves two main audiences,” she explained. “There is the working parent’s side of the app, who would download it for free and use it for free to find local childcare provider in their community. And then the other half of the app really serves as a business management tool for home daycare providers. But my paid customer is the daycare provider.”
With her new platform, Doucette hopes to ease the burden for parents searching for quality childcare in an increasingly competitive system while also empowering childcare providers to take intiative with the free app to get the best results. She will be launching Her Yes Club this spring to create a safe childcare for mothers in need to find easily accessible childcare provider.
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