Queensborough kids will be kicking off the New Year in spiffy new daycare digs.
The first attendees of the new child-care space in the Queensborough Community Centre will head to daycare on Jan. 2, 2014.
“This will be the last piece to the centre,” said Renee Chadwick, manager of the Queensborough Community Centre. “Kids (daycare) will be operating the facility.”
The nonprofit daycare centre has been licensed for 25 children between the ages of three and five.
“With the child care facility, it was a priority in this community,” Chadwick said. “The community had indicated, with new residents moving in, there needs to be more child-care facilities in Queensborough. This is the first licensed child-care facility in a civic facility in New Westminster.”
JoAnne McBean, director of Kids Daycare, said Queensborough Kids is a sister site to the facility located in the Victoria Hill development. Kids opened a child-care centre at Royal Columbian Hospital in 1985, before it temporarily relocated into a portable and then moved into a purpose-built building at the Victoria Hill development five years ago.
McBean is thrilled that Kids is able to provide quality child care in Queensborough, noting that the Early Learning Partnership at UBC once identified Queensborough as a place that would benefit from child-care facilities.
While some families have already enrolled their children in the city’s newest child-care facility, McBean expects more kids to register once word gets out that the centre is open for business. She said the centre will be staffed by “seasoned professionals” in the field of early childhood education, including a Queensborough resident.
“We feel really privileged to be supporting another set of families in New Westminster,” she said. “Our board of directors will oversee both sites. They saw the vision as well.”
According to Chadwick, Aragon Development contributed $100,000 to the child-care facility through the City of New Westminster. Aragon is building the Port Royal development in Queensborough.
New Westminster city council approved of a child-care needs assessment in 2008, which was followed by a strategy in 2009 and step-by-step guide in 2010. The strategy recommended a number of actions including the construction of a civic child-care facility to be operated by a non-profit provider, the development of a child-care reserve fund, the establishment of a civic child-care grant program and the implementation of a child-care protocol between the city and the school district.
Earlier this year, the Planning Institute of British Columbia awarded the City of New Westminster a 2013 Award for Excellence in Planning Practice for its child-care strategy.
