The future of the Kubby House Child Care Centre is looking bright with the staff and committee outlining their exciting plans for expansion of the service at a community information session last Tuesday.
Kubby committee president Tanya Gilbert said the committee and staff had been working for some time on a professional business plan to help them towards their aim of eventually being able to provide the community with
a long day care facility in a purpose-built centre.
The Kubby House Childcare Centre is a community facility run by a volunteer management committee on behalf of the Cobar community and has been operating for more than 25 years.
“Our service has lots of exciting opportunities and changes coming in the near future,” Mrs Gilbert said.
She said the committee also recognise there are a number of barriers for local families to access the services they provide.
At last week’s community information session Mrs Gilbert said they wanted to hear feedback from the community.
“We would love to see current users, future users, businesses who have staff that could use our service, and interested community members come along and give us feedback, ask questions and provide suggestions as to how we might improve the service to the community,” she said.
The centre currently has 31 places and also has a long waiting list of 35 families.
Mrs Gilbert said in her five and a half years as a volunteer on the Kubby committee, that waiting list hasn’t gotten any smaller.
“The issues we face are also still the same, but they are getting bigger and more challenging to address,” she said.
The committee and staff has invested many hours in developing a strategic plan that will take Kubby forward.
Mrs Gilbert explained their plan had four key focus areas: sustainability and development; investment in their team/educators; service expansion – long term; and positive promotion and advertising of the centre.
“These are all little stepping stones in a big picture, the ground work towards a dream,” she said.
Among the committee’s long term goals are to obtain land for a purpose built centre (and not relocate to the old hospital); provide a food service to families; and offer longer hours of care for working families.
