History and Organization
On campus child care was first established in 1969 when a group of student parents started a casual drop-in centre for infants in a student lounge in Renfrew House Residence Building. By 1972, the centre had expanded to include children up to the age of 3 and was granted additional space in the Loeb Building. In 1975, the program was incorporated as a non-profit child care centre and acquired official charitable organization status and the centre expanded again in 1986 to include preschool children up to the age of 5. In 1992, after 23 years of occupying two "temporary locations", Carleton University, in conjunction with Colonel By Child Care Centre, received a capital grant from the Province of Ontario and additional funding from Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton to build a new child care centre on the Carleton University campus. The new centre opened in January 1994 to house the children in a building designed specifically for them.
Colonel By Child Care Centre is a non-profit parent cooperative licensed under the Day Nurseries Act by the Ministry of Community and Social Services. The centre maintains a Purchase of Service Agreement with the City of Ottawa which enables our program to offer a limited number of subsidized spaces to families who qualify.
Parents of children enrolled in the centre form the membership of the board of directors and the coordinator, the office administrator and a teacher from each of the three programs sit on the board as non-voting members. The board of directors meets monthly and is elected at an Annual General Meeting which all parents and staff attend.
The centre operates within a Cooperative Management Framework. The board attempts to strive for consensus by ensuring that everyone directly affected by management decisions are involved in those decisions and processes exist to ensure that parents and staff actively participate in decision making and policy development.