BCIT Student Association’s child-care centre will more than double its capacity by next June thanks to $500,000 in provincial funding announced this week.
Minister of Children and Family Development Stephanie Cadieux was in Burnaby Wednesday to announce the outlay under the Child Care Major Capital Funding Program.
The money will allow the child-care centre at the local technical institute add 37 new spaces – 12 for infants and toddlers and 25 for children aged three to five.
About 100 children are currently on a waitlist for the centre’s existing 25 spots (for kids aged three to five), with waits of a year or more to get in.
"Burnaby is a growing community, and many families here are looking for child care,” Burnaby-North MLA Richard Lee stated in a government press release. “The BCIT child-care centre already has a great reputation in the community, so I know these additional spaces will be in high demand."
An expansion of the centre has been part of the student association’s long-term strategic plan for a while, according to BCITSA government relations strategist Sameer Ismail.
“The big obstacle has been capital,” he told the NOW.
The centre currently serves only children of BCIT students, faculty and staff, but the expansion could open spaces to the general public as well, he said.
The addition of infant and toddler spots will also fill a growing need, according to Ismail.
“Those are the toughest spots for people to find right now,” he said. “We’ve had quite a healthy level of inquiry about it, so, as we were doing our planning, it just really made sense for us to plan for those spaces as well.”
The BCIT funding was part of an $11.3-million announcement this week for 1,818 new licenced child-care spaces across 30 B.C. communities.
Since November 2014, the Ministry of Children and Family Development has spent $26.5 million to help build 4,300 new licenced child-care spaces in the province as part of government's commitment to create 13,000 spaces by 2020.
