Corporate-sponsored child-care provider Kids & Company opened its newest Vancouver-area facility September 6.
The North Vancouver centre will have spaces for 95 children, almost half of which will be available to infants and toddlers.
Because Kids & Company's services are corporate-sponsored, the parents using them must work for a member company, which will offer the service to their employees as a benefit.
President, CEO and co-founder Victoria Sopik said that allows Kids & Company to guarantee spaces for their children, eliminating the need for long waiting lists. She added that Vancouver has a shortage of child-care facilities, so Kids & Company, which holds spaces for member companies, gives their employees an edge because they don't have to deal with long waiting lists.
As a mother of eight children, now ranging in age from 14 to 25, Sopik knows first-hand the complexities of making child-care arrangements that adapt to working parents' busy lives.
"It was impossible to find flexible care, and that's really what we see most of our families want," she said. "Very few of them really want the five-day-a-week, all-week-long care."
Therefore, in addition to regularly scheduled care, Kids & Company offers back-up services that give employees the chance to use the company when their primary arrangements fall through.
Sopik said the company's mission is to promote an improved work-life balance by alleviating the stress and work disruption associated with unreliable child care, which promotes a more productive workforce and reduces parental absenteeism. Health Canada has estimated that such absenteeism costs Canadian companies up to $10 billion each year.
Kids & Company has several hundred member companies, including BMO Financial Group.
"BMO employees can take advantage of 10 days of backup or 'emergency' child-care services at Kids & Company," said Carol Greene, BMO media relations. "It's a benefit we offer to help employees manage demands of family and worry when their regular child-care arrangements fall through for some reason."
An unusual perk offered by Kids & Company is that it allows both parents and grandparents to log on to a secure site and watch their children via webcams located throughout the centres.
All locations provide children with full meals. Sopik said that while it's not unusual to offer meals in child-care centres in Ontario, that's not often the case in B.C. Kids & Company also offers day outings to such attractions as zoos and museums, as well as lessons in French, art and sign language. In addition to child care, the company offers a nanny referral service, in-home elder care and a meal delivery program.
Kids & Company, named Profit magazine's fastest-growing company in 2008, has 43 locations across Canada and has plans to open another seven in the next year, including one in Victoria within the next few weeks. •
