Licensed child-care spaces per 100 children

The change is 22.0% of the earlier value, at or above the 5% threshold.

More spaces per 100 children means more families can find licensed care. 46.6 spaces per 100 children in 2024, up from 38.2 in 2022 (City of Victoria, 2025 Child Care Needs Assessment Update). Under 3: 31.7. School age: 33.4. The City’s targets are 50 per 100 for children up to age 5 and 80 for school-age children.

Outcome measures read Better, Worse or About the same; published government targets read Ahead of, On or Behind target; value-judgement measures read Rising, Falling or Steady in a neutral colour. A change smaller than the agency's own margin of error, or otherwise smaller than 5% of the earlier value, is About the same (or Steady). No change is calculated across a marked break in a series. The rule.

Why it matters. Without a space, a parent may not be able to work. The age groups matter most: infant and school-age spaces are scarcest.

• The City counts licensed spaces from Island Health’s licensing inventory (September 2024) and divides them by BC Stats’ projected number of children. Multi-age and family child-care spaces are split evenly across the three age groups, and the City calls the gaps rough estimates.
• The total counts every licensed space against every child aged 0 to 12. Because each age group needs its own kind of space, the age groups below matter more than the total.
• The City’s targets (50 per 100 for children up to 5, 80 per 100 for school age, by 2030) are set out in this assessment. This site has not found a separate Council resolution adopting them, so they are shown as related targets and not drawn as adopted ones.
• The City updates the assessment every few years; the next update date is not published.

Area: City of Victoria

The City of Victoria municipality only, all neighbourhoods.

Included

• All City of Victoria neighbourhoods, including Downtown, James Bay, Fairfield, Fernwood, Oaklands, Hillside/Quadra, North Park, Burnside, Victoria West, Rockland, Jubilee and Gonzales

Not included

• Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt, Langford and every other municipality in the region

Official definition

• City of Victoria: Neighbourhood Boundaries (open data map)

How the agency describes it: City of Victoria.

This number is published by the agency as shown; it is not calculated here. The script reads it from the agency’s own document and refuses to show it unless the expected text is found.

By age, 2024

• Under 3 years: 31.7 per 100 (2024). 540 spaces for a projected 1,701 children. City target: 50 by 2030.
• 3 to 4 years (to school age): 127.8 per 100 (2024). 1,360 spaces for a projected 1,064 children. City target: 50 by 2030.
• School age (5 to 12): 33.4 per 100 (2024). 1,552 spaces for a projected 4,643 children. City target: 80 by 2030.

Target

A level a government has formally committed to reach, in a law, an order, a plan or a bylaw, usually by a date.

BC Stats

The statistics office of the Province of British Columbia.

All the words this site uses

This figure is public but not under an open licence: the agency publishes it for anyone to read, and it is shown here with credit and a link to the agency’s terms. About licences.

Published by

City of Victoria, 2025 Child Care Needs Assessment Update

Licence

Public data, not under an open licence. Used with attribution. Agency’s terms of use

Updated by agency

Every few years (City child care needs assessment); latest release Oct 6, 2025

Retrieved

Nov 12, 2026, 10:22 PM B.C. time

Source: City of Victoria, 2025 Child Care Needs Assessment Update. Public document, used with attribution; not endorsed by the publisher.