Y WA Kalgoorlie outside-school-hours care centre to reopen with fresh team after staff challenges

A fresh team of “friendly faces” will reopen a Kalgoorlie-Boulder outside-school-hours care program after staff shortages forced it to close its doors at the start of the school year. The new team at Y WA Kalgoorlie OSHC have dusted off the toys ready to welcome children back into its before and after-school program from Monday. The program’s new manager Cindy Daniels said she knew how important the OSHC was for the Kalgoorlie-Boulder community. “There’s not really a lot of other options for before and after-school care and we’re in a mining town, most of our parents are working,” she said. “In today’s economy, most parents have to work because it’s too expensive not to so a before and after-school facility is really something that’s needed everywhere, not just here in the Goldfields.” Ms Daniels said the new team of “friendly faces” were excited to meet both new and old families at the centre from next week. “I have always had a passion for working with children from babysitting at a young age to volunteering at local gyms and children’s clubs,” she said. “OSHC is my niche, and I am very active, and fun-loving and have a strong passion for helping children thrive.” The Kalgoorlie-Boulder OSHC unexpectedly announced it would halt before and after-school care in January because of staffing challenges. Ms Daniels said maintaining staff in regional areas came with its issues. “Childcare staffing in general is difficult because we’ve got laws that we need to abide by,” she said. “We need a certain amount of staff for a certain amount of children, and I just think that maybe everybody doesn’t want to live regional, so it’s hard to maintain staffing out here.” The Y Kalgoorlie OSHC program provides a bus service to transport children to and from the centre where they can take part in a range of programmed activities. Y WA chief executive Tim McDonald said getting the Kalgoorlie-Boulder centre up-and-running had been a priority for the not-for-profit this year. “We have been prioritising this for the town of Kalgoorlie since we were forced to temporarily shut our doors earlier this year,” Dr McDonald said. “We recognise that this service provides vital support to the community, allowing parents to continue to work and so we have worked tirelessly to reinstate it, despite challenges.”