$10M project will expand Mount Saint Vincent child-care centre amid 'tremendous' need

Melanie Waye has seen what quality child care can do.

Waye's son, Xander, attends the child study centre at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, where he's benefited from the site's inclusion learning support program and the sense of family and community created by staff, she said.

"We feel privileged for the opportunity to have him in such an open, caring and nurturing environment," Waye, who is also a parent rep on the centre's board, said Friday.

"They are rooting for him every step of the way and his achievements are celebrated as team wins."

Waye was on hand for the announcement that more children will soon be able to benefit from that environment.

The university is partnering with the provincial and federal governments on a $10-million expansion for the centre, which will create an additional 82 spaces, up to 32 of which will be dedicated to infants.

The centre currently has 40 spaces, and only serves the age range of 18 months to five years old.

Joël Dickinson, the university's president, said officials have been looking for ways to expand the centre's offerings for about six years.

Along with creating space for more children and diversifying the age range, the new location will also allow for expanded teaching and research opportunities for people already working in the child-care sector and those studying early childhood education, said Dickinson.

"In those teaching spaces, students will be learning from the best of the best."

Dickinson told reporters that the centre has a waitlist of about 90. Those people will have the first chance to get a space when the expansion is ready.

University officials are also looking at the possibility of extended hours to be able to accommodate parents who do shift work. The site's hours right now are 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Regardless of what happens with the hours, the new spaces will mean more people need to be hired.

The new centre will be an expansion of a building on campus that once housed the residence of the university president and has since been used for office space.

The university is paying half the cost, with the province kicking in $2 million and the remaining $3 million coming from the federal child care care agreement Nova Scotia signed with Ottawa with the intention of decreasing the cost of child care and expanding the number of spaces.

Design work is underway and construction is expected to take two years.

Dickinson said there's a "tremendous" level of need for child care and she expects that need to increase as new neighbours start arriving in the coming years.

Southwest Properties has started work on a major development just up the hill from the future site of the new child-care centre. The development, located on the lands of the former Sisters of Charity Mother House property, proposes 2,400 new housing units.