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Corporate child care company expanding [CA]

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Author: 
Ottawa Business Journal
Format: 
Article
Publication Date: 
4 Feb 2005
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Kids and Company, a Toronto-based operator of corporate child care facilities, will soon open its first child care centres in Ottawa.

The company currently runs eight child care centres in the Greater Toronto area. The planned Ottawa centres are part of an eight-city expansion, which includes Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. It plans to open two centres--one in the downtown core, another in Kanata--within a couple of months. It's also scouting a second downtown location for future expansion.

Kids and Company provides guaranteed full-time and emergency back-up child care to the employees of its corporate clients. Spaces are not available to the general public. Many of its corporate clients are in the financial or professional services sector, and consider the service a benefit for their employees.

Sopik, who has 8 children of her own, opened her first centre in 2002. She now boasts more than 100 cleints.

All Kids and Company centres are fully licensed, and comply with government standards on the ratio of children to staff. It offers care for children up to 12 years old.

"Companies have come to realize that access to high-quality child care helps maintain the productivity - and loyalty - of their employees who need it," she says.

Many employers cover the full cost of the child care. The company also offers up to 20 days a year of emergency or backup child care, at a cost of $50 a day.

- reprinted from the Ottawa Business Journal