Cookie campaign helps Hope’s Home create Saskatoon childcare centre

Hope’s Home is aiming to raise funds for a medically inclusive child care centre in Saskatoon. CKOM Morning Show’s Mark Loshack sat down with Sash Broda to learn more about the non-profit organization, and how the Smile Cookie campaign will help.

Listen to the full interview here:

MARK LOSHACK: It’s Smile Cookie Week at Tim Hortons, and half the proceeds are going to be going to Hope’s Home. We have Sash Broda from Hope’s Home joining us this morning. Sash, tell us all about what Hope’s Home is all about.

SASH BRODA: So Hope’s Home is a non-profit (in Regina) and expanding into Saskatoon. We provide medical childcare centers for families with kids with complex medical needs. We’re really a unique model in the country, one of the only ones that provides this kind of service.

Any families with kids with those complex needs, a lot of times they can’t get any kind of childcare (and) they can’t go to a typical daycare. Lots of those centers wouldn’t have the resources, the nursing staff to care for those medical needs. So we’re a place where we have all of those in the same center and same building. It allows those kids to to come to a daycare setting, be around other kids, interact with kids, have those friendships and those social connections, and at the same time, provides that support for families. A lot of times it can be really isolating, I think, for families and for parents when you have those kids with complex needs, because you don’t know who you can rely on. It becomes very isolating for those families.

How many kids can you support in each centre?

We are expanding to Saskatoon, and funds from Smile Cookie this year are going to help us raise the dollars that we need. We’re raising $8.6 million to open our first medical child care centre in Saskatoon. This center is going to be the biggest one that we have in the province. And it’ll be large enough to care for 144 children.

What is the age range that Hope’s Home supports?

We are caring for kids in our centers anywhere from six weeks old when they have those medical needs, up to six years old. Once they’re in the school system, we can still provide support through after school and before-school programming, but really focusing on those key years of six weeks to six years old.

Is this in conjunction with the Children’s Hospital?

We’re separate from the Children’s Hospital, but we do partner with them very closely. The Children’s Hospital Foundation actually has supported our campaign. They’re providing funds to make sure that we have everything in our childcare centres to provide that medical care. We’ll have nurses on staff, we have physical development consultants, so any kids that have physical therapies or occupational therapies, they’re able to get those.

What needs are served in the childcare centres?

We focus a lot on the medical needs, whether it’s seizure disorders or mobility issues or tube feeds. But those 144 spots aren’t just medical kids. We don’t want it to ever be an institution in that sense where it’s just medical kids separate on their own. Siblings and kids from the community can be there. But there are a lot of kids with sensory needs or anxiety needs, so our staff is definitely providing care for them as well.

Well, it sounds like a great place to go for the kids. And I know that you’re getting the proceeds from the Smile Cookie campaign, but also there’s another charity as well?

Absolutely. We’re splitting the funds with Roadways Literacy Academy, based in Saskatoon. It’s a nice match, because for our child care centers, we focus a lot on early childhood education at the same time. And what Roadways does is they provide smaller class size situations for kids who have learning disabilities or need that extra attention. This is a place where they get that smaller, maybe two-on-one or one-on-one attention. The kids can catch up or get back to where they need to be, or even get past where they need to be. It’s a really, really unique system, with both of us helping with childhood education.

Get your Smile Cookies everybody! Eat as many as you can!

Editor’s note: this interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.