New child-care spaces coming to Cumberland
Province announces significant space increase in licensed centres
The YMCA of Cumberland County has opened a new site through the Oxford Regional Education Centre with 18 spaces for toddlers and preschoolers.
The move came as part of the Nova Scotia government’s announcement in May that it would be opening more than 300 new spaces in licensed centres and family homes due to an increase of provincial and federal funding.
“Nova Scotia children deserve a quality early childhood education and families deserve access to affordable and reliable child care,” Premier Tim Houston stated in the original announcement. “We are committed to transforming the delivery of child care in our province so more families can benefit.”
The new spaces opening in Cumberland County are part of the province’s plan to ultimately create 1,500 new licensed child-care spaces that will also see the YMCA of Cumberland County open dozens of spaces for infants, toddlers and preschoolers in Pugwash in the fall.
“Basically, it is up to around 42 spaces,” says Joanne Murrell, project director for access and expansion in Nova Scotia’s Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. “Until our licensing officers actually get out and measure the space and confirm that it has an adequate amount of space, we can’t confirm that but that is pretty much what it should be when it is developed.”
Murrell notes the investment into these new expansions for Cumberland County come through the CanadaNova Scotia Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement in which the federal government has promised $605 million over five years to go towards early learning and child care in the province.
“Cumberland County, and in fact many parts of Nova Scotia, have fairly low access to child care,” explains Murrell. “So this is sort of a first step really in starting to fill in some of those gaps.”
She adds the way child care has developed over time in Nova Scotia is a market-based model. As a result, if a childcare provider wanted to open a centre in a particularly viable market, they were simply free to do so.
“That has started to shift a bit,” she says. “Within the department, we are starting to do a lot more planning and really looking at what areas actually need child care; what areas are underserved (so) we’re starting to focus in and put investments in communities where we see that there is a need.”
In addition to Cumberland County, Pictou is a region the province sees in need. During the same announcement of Cumberland’s additional child-care spaces, the YMCA of Pictou County also announced it would open room for 50 new infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
“We have been working fairly closely with (the YMCA) as well as other providers,” says Murrell. “We are in kind of fairly regular contact to find out how and what kind of support they need (and) in this case with the Y, they just happen to be one of the largest providers in the province with the greatest capacity to actually do these kinds of facility developments.”
For more information on early learning and child care in the province, visit www.childcarenovascotia.ca