The province has approved a boost in child care funding for Windsor Essex which could be as much as $10-million a year.
It's part of $200-million across Ontario this year.
It flows from an item in the spring budget to expand the number of child care spaces in Ontario by 100,000.
Executive Director Housing and Children's Services, Debbie Cercone, says they hope to have a report to council in September outlining their plan with the specific dollar figure.
Some of the funding would begin to be used as soon as this fall.
"It meets a number of needs across child care, so spaces is one of them but also supporting children with special needs and opportunities for operators to support other kinds of expenses they would have in their programs" says Cercone.
She says consultants are reaching out to gather information about people who can't get the help they need right now.
Windsor daycare centre (by AM800's Peter Langille)
Cercone says the child care community has faced serious challenges singe the implementation of all-day kindergarten 5 years ago.
"They were no longer supporting 4 and 5 year olds in their child care programs so they have had to make some adjustments to their business model and their operations in order to attract more families who have children younger than 4" according to Cercone.
She says the consultants are using Statistics Canada data and input from the 60 operators in the Windsor-Essex area to come up with a picture of the needs.
There are currently between 3 and 4000 children being subsidized through Housing and Children's Services as well as around 1000 special needs children.
Cercone says the province's goal is to double those number in the coming 5 years.