Society changing childcare centre
Uncertain timeline for repairs to be completed following flood
Shawn Giilck
Northern News Services
Thursday, April 16, 2015
INUVIK
It will still be some time before the Children's First Centre is back in full operation, but that hasn't kept its directors from thinking big.
Kelly Penner, the chairperson of the Children First Society, provided an update on the facility on April 10.
The centre, which has a capacity to host 127 children, is one of the largest in Canada, and is the largest such daycare centre in the NWT, Penner said.
It's been closed since March 1 after a violent windstorm caused a ceiling to drop in the central section of the centre, breaking a sprinkler head in the process.
Half of the centre, including the kitchen, the after-school programming rooms and the gym were badly flooded, as was the crawl space.
The other half, where the pre-school programming is housed, was largely undamaged.
To date, no estimate of the dollar value of the damage to the centre, which is owned by the Town of Inuvik, has been made public.
On the advice of its insurance agents, the town brought in a structural engineer to study the damage and provide suggestions as to how the fix it and prevent any future recurrences.
"We just finished out first full year of operations, and it's definitely been a challenge," Penner said. "Some of this was expected, since we knew there would likely be some surprises around the projections for enrolment and business expenses."
"At the moment, our current enrolment has topped out at 85 to 90 children, which is lower that projected and seems to be mostly due to the downturn in the economy."
In response, the centre is now introducing a tiered fee structure geared to income and whether government subsidies are available to individual families.
"The bottom tier is set by the GNWT's subsidy rate," Penner said. "We believe we need to find a way to encourage access by low-income families. If we balance staff and child ratios correctly, we can admit families at the subsidized rate and have it cover their staff and nutrition costs, although it will not help us with overhead."
The society is introducing a third, middle tier as well, for families who don't qualify for a subsidy and either don't wish to pay the full fees or who can't pay them, Penner said.
Penner said due to the closure of the centre, the society, which operates it, has incurred some "major costs" due mostly to a loss of revenues.
"The programs are up and running in temporary spaces at the college, the interagency building, and the Midnight Sun Recreation Complex, and we're very grateful for the co-operation to make this happen," Penner said.
The preschool and infant programs are expected to be back operating out of the centre by the end of April, she said. The other wing, where the damage was concentrated, "will take longer," but she didn't provide a time line.
That will enable the centre and society to "implement most of our new programming," Penner said.
"In developing this new programming we took a hard look at our existing business plan, the childcare needs in Inuvik, and the needs of employers and staff."
The society is bringing in evening and weekend hours to make sure the centre "is broadly accessible."
"We needed to do a couple of things. We needed to take steps to put the society on a sound financial footing, and we needed to meet the needs of employers and working families."
