By Brady Bateman

Saskatchewan government commits to early childhood care

Dec 7, 2018 | 1:00 PM

The Saskatchewan Government announced the addition of nearly 150 child care centre spaces in Prince Albert, Regina and Swift Current.

Local MLA Joe Hargrave was in attendance of the announcement, which was made at Prince Albert’s St. Catherine Catholic School and Children’s Choice Child Development Co-operative.

Children’s Choice will receive 54 of these new spaces. Funding will be provided through the Canada-Saskatchewan Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Agreement.

“We are very excited to be able to allocate more licensed child care centre spaces,” Hargrave said. “Today’s announcement brings our total allocation to nearly 1,200 new spaces across the province this year. Access to affordable, high-quality child care is important to families across Saskatchewan and we are very pleased to make child care accessible to more families in Prince Albert.”

Children’s Choice and Prince Albert Catholic schools currently have a partnership to operate three child care centres in Prince Albert. The allocation of 54 new child care spaces will allow the opening of a fourth child care centre to be located at St. Catherine Catholic School, which is scheduled to be opened by March 2020.

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Gail Szautner, executive-director of Children’s Choice Child Development Centre was in attendance of the announcement, and told paNOW that the additional child care spaces will make a large impact in the area.

“We provide early learning programs for children ages 18 months to 12 years. This new partnership with Prince Albert Catholic Schools at St. Catherine will bring the number of spaces that we provide early learning for children with them to 206,” Szautner said.

Sznauter added there are an additional 65 spaces at a separate location, bringing the total number of spaces for early learning programs for young children to 271 spaces in the community.

“We implement the Ministry of Education’s curriculum which is called play and exploration. This is where children learn through interaction with their environment,” Sznauter said. “This announcement means we will be able to provide 54 additional child care spaces in partnership with Prince Albert Catholic School Division in an area that definitely needs it.”

George Bolduc, board-chair with the Prince Albert Catholic school division, was also in attendance of the event, and expressed his happiness with the announcement.

“It’s just great news for us. This helps our community. It just gives a place for parents to be reassured that their child is going to be taken care of,” Balduc said. “We couldn’t do this on our own, with our restrained budgets there is just no way we could do something like this without the help of the government.”

The design and final location of the child care spaces is currently underway.