Combining Childcare and Therapy: What One Provider Actually Changes

A family with a child in therapy is usually running a small logistics operation. A caregiver on some days. A therapist on others. A schedule where a session and a nap collide once a fortnight. Two sets of instructions about the same child, held by people who have never met.

This is about what changes when that comes from one provider — and, because it is worth being honest, what does not.

What consolidating actually solves

**One schedule.** Sessions and care hours arranged against each other rather than in spite of each other — which mostly means sessions land in the windows a child can actually use, instead of at the end of a long afternoon.

**One place to say a thing once.** Allergies, routines, what a hard morning looks like, what helps. Families repeat this endlessly, and something is always lost between the tellings.

**Continuity of people.** The same faces rather than a rotation. For an autistic child in particular, a new person is a real cost, and it is one that gets paid repeatedly when care and therapy come from separate rotas.

What it does not solve

**It does not replace an assessment.** Puffin does not assess and does not diagnose. The plan comes from a registered SLP, OT, or a supervising behaviour analyst. If your child has not been assessed, that is the first step and it is not this.

**It does not mean a caregiver delivers therapy.** These are different roles with different training and different supervision. A childcare booking is childcare. A therapy session runs to a clinician's plan and is recorded against it. Blurring the two would be worse for your child and dishonest about what you are buying.

**It does not make one bill.** Childcare and pediatric support are priced and booked separately, because they are separate services.

**And it is not a reason to leave a therapist who is working.** Puffin's pediatric support is being designed to work alongside a family's existing team, not to require you to consolidate for its own sake. Continuity with a professional your child trusts is worth more than tidiness.

Where the schedule actually helps

Two specifics, since this is the part that sounds abstract:

**Therapy in the good window, care around it.** A session at 4:30 PM after a full day at school is often a session wasted. If a caregiver is already covering the afternoon, the session can sit where the child is most able to use it, and the care hours flex around it rather than the reverse.

**Respite and intervention not colliding.** A respite shift immediately after an intensive session gives you a depleted child and a harder shift. When one provider holds both, that is visible in advance rather than discovered afterward.

Where Puffin is with this

Split, and worth being precise about:

**Childcare is live and bookable now** — ages 0 to 12, from $32/hr for children 12 months and over, three-hour minimum, across 16 municipalities in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley.

**Pediatric therapy support is in development and not bookable yet.** SLPA and OTA at $80 per 50–60 minute session when it opens, and behaviour intervention at $50 per hour. There is an interest list.

**Respite for autistic children is $42/hr and arranged directly today** — by email at hello@puffinservices.com or phone on (604) 283-2829 — rather than through online booking.

So "one provider" is not fully available yet, and saying otherwise would be selling something that does not exist. What exists today is the childcare half and the respite half, from an organisation that employs, insures and CRRP-clears everyone it sends.