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I am proud to offer my support for Lansdowne Children's Centre's request for Stage 1 planning approval, and respectfully ask that you prioritize Lansdowne through your Ministry’s results-based planning process later this year.
Signed,
I am proud to offer my support for
Lansdowne Children's Centre...
Bailey
in
Brantford
The population of our region is BOOMING.
We are thrilled to welcome so many new families into Brantford, Brant, Haldimand and Norfolk. As demand for our services and supports GROWS, so does our need to GROW in response.
It is time to build a NEW Lansdowne Children's Centre.
The current wait list for services at Lansdowne Children’s Centre exceeds
2,449 children , nearly double the volume since pre-pandemic 2019.
There is no more room to compromise.
Board Member Mike Gatopolous is a parent of a child who attends Lansdowne. Mike is an active advocate, sharing the impact that Lansdowne services, resources and supports provided his family, and the purgatory of time spent on a waitlist. Seen here at a January 2023 meeting of Brant County council.
Rogers TV20 (Kitchener/Brantford) produced this community feature, including comments from MPP Brantford-Brant Will Bouma and Executive Director Rita-Marie Hadley at the June 2023 Lansdowne annual general meeting.
The analysis in 2020 reported that the current Lansdowne space-needs are nearly triple the amount of space available in our 57-year old building.
Children are Paying the Price and Can’t Keep Waiting:
• Children in our community have had vital procedures delayed, suffered learning losses, and experienced devastating impacts on their physical and mental development.
• These problems will continue to get worse without expansion. The challenges Lansdowne children face will only compound as they age and become more difficult to address.
Everyday Matters in the Life of a Child:
• Only one in three kids in Ontario receive services within the clinical standard, with the majority waiting almost three years to access services.
• At Lansdowne Children's Centre in Brantford that ratio is only one in four kids.
• Families are falling further behind and wait lists are longer than they have ever been.
• Long wait times and limited resources are not new barriers to timely care, but these barriers have increased significantly since the pandemic began.
It’s Time to Champion Children’s Healthcare:
• By acting quickly, we can stop children from suffering and start their healing.
• Children deserve a strong system of care that provides the care they need, when they need it, and where they need it.
Spacious, open concept areas for connectivity, with access to daylight.
Outdoor recreation areas designed with enhanced sensory environments.
Spaces for individual and group play.
Dedicated treatment and assessment areas, designed for program delivery.
Universally accessible washrooms.
Spaces to meet and work.
Enhanced sensory environments for client therapy and recreation.
Spaces that are calming and comfortable.
With a new facility we can address serious limitations.
Offer improved accessibility at ground level and reach new heights in a multi-storey design, including consideration for the access and mobility needs of our clients and staff.
Reduce wait time and welcome even more clients and their families to our expanded assessment and treatment facilities, with more capacity to grow our team of dedicated staff;
Reduce environmental dangers by providing adequate on-site parking for all families and staff; reducing exposure to increasingly busy side streets and improved visibility at entrance and exit;
Reduce travel time for client families by hosting more services, including sensory environment, respite and group activitieis on-site, while also reducing costs by eliminating rental fees;
Host more group meetings, community events and recreation programs in expanded meeting rooms and recreation facilities, specially desiged to accomodate the needs of our clients;
Deliver a more equitable, quality experience for clients and their families, in a comfortable modern environment without compromise to care and privacy.
Together we can impact change in the lives of many families in our community in pursuit of our mission, to support infants, children and youth with physical, developmental or communication needs, and their families, and our vision, realizing the optimal potential for infants, children and youth.
The preparation for the new-build Lansdowne proposal included a full day visioning workshop to establish a direction for the redevelopment of Lansdowne Children's Centre. Hosted in December 2019 with Montgomery Sisam Architects, over 100 Lansdowne staff and community members, including the Mayors of Brant County, the City of Brantford and other City staff, came and offered their opinions on the test plans and the visioning boards. Each participant was also provided with three Red Dots that they could place on any portion of a given panel to anonymously indicate a preference.
Of the Visioning Boards presented, the most dialogue centered around the Sensory Environment of the building as well as the different Open Office solutions for staff workspace. Feedback was universal in stating that the building should be as non-institutional as possible and that the environment should be engaging to the full age range of the clients who will use the building.
