Alberta’s Minister of Children’s Services saw first-hand Sept. 5 how the Westlock Child Care Society has benefitted from the $25-dollar-a-day grant program at the Westlock Community Daycare.
The society is one of 22 Alberta Early Learning and Child Care Centres to receive up to $500,000 from the province in April.
“Every centre that has got the grant to be an Early Learning and Child Care Centre (ELCC), it’s clearly meant a lot to them,” minister Danielle Larivee said.
One of the goals of the grant was to test it out in different regions of the province and Larivee said Westlock was a great centre to be a demonstration site.
“It’s nice to have an opportunity to showcase what an ELCC would look like in a rural community,” she said.
“But also they had here — the board and the staff — the capacity to put forward a great proposal in terms of expanding opportunities for access and implementing the curriculum. They put forward a really quality proposal and (you) should be proud of your board and the work that they’ve done and the staff here.”
The Westlock Day Child Care Society’s application included expanding the centre’s operating hours, hiring more staff, opening up spaces for more kids, lowering the daily rate for families to $25 a day, and expanding programming.
Society executive director Christine Villeneuve said it was absolutely outstanding to have the Children’s Services minister personally visit the site on a Tuesday morning after the long weekend.
“It is just the epitome of everything that we’ve worked for,” she said.
“Receiving this grant is a huge, huge opportunity for the community, but it’s also additional work for us — staff, the office staff, even our board of directors — only because we have this sum of money now that we have to allocate in certain ways.”
About $40,000 will go towards building a Snoezelen room as a calm place for children with diverse needs.
The multisensory space will feature bubble tubes, lights, a swing and projections on the walls.
“It’s an excellent addition to our centre for that inclusiveness that the minister was really looking for in these grant proposals,” Villeneuve said.
“Any child who attends the centre can absolutely use that room because sometimes somebody is having an off day and they just want a calm space. As long as we have the staff, they can bring six children.”
The centre also doubled its staff and more than doubled the number of children. Approximately 80 kids are now registered and about 50 to 60 attend on a daily basis.
Villeneuve said that affordability definitely plays a factor in a parent’s decision to enrol their child, but that it’s also because of quality programming.
“We don’t have TVs up on the walls, they’re not watching movies all day; we’re engaging children, we’re teaching them, we’re engaging in their creativity and their imagination,” she said.
Larivee agreed that the grant has given parents had better access to affordable and quality childcare.
“They want to know that when they drop their child off, they’re going to have all the support they need to reach their potential,” she said.
“Having the support in terms of professional development, having the support to implement the provincial childcare curriculum to ensure their play really helps them to learn, that’s what really matters to the parents.”
Although the grant is part of a pilot project, Larivee said the Early Learning and Child Care Centre model has been very well received and she was looking forward to evaluating the outcomes and expanding the program across the board, as provincial finances permit.
“Certainly our goal is to move towards $25-dollar-a-day affordable, quality childcare right across the province for every parent, every child that wants the opportunity, to go to work or to go back to school or just to make sure their children have that support outside of the home,” she said. “Certainly we want to offer that to everyone.”
