OUR HISTORY

St. Bartholomew’s Children’s Centre has been serving the Regent Park Community for well over 30 years. In the beginning the Centre was part of a collection of programs, operated by the church, which administered to the high needs of this community. 

In 1983 the Centre was incorporated and began operating as a secular After-School recreation program. The Centre existed in this incarnation for almost 20 years. 

In 1999 when the province announced that they would no longer fund the program as an after school drop-in recreation facility and the only option we were given was to open a School–age daycare. This transition enabled us to provide more focused programming and trained staff, as there were very few staffing guidelines for after-school program at the time. 

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This sizeable transition helped transform the way we deliver services to our community. 

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What did these changes look like?

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    The development of new policies and procedures;

    Strict programming changes set out by governing documents; 

    Purchase and acquisition of play equipment and materials;

    Our “Drop-In” became an all-the-time program.