Northern Beaches Council will explore options for additional childcare services at the northern end of the peninsula and in Frenchs Forest as part of the draft Children’s Services Strategy currently on public exhibition.

Other strategic actions include the trial of multiple service types at Dee Why and Harbour View Children’s Centres to improve flexibility for families, trialling a collaboration with an elder care service and the implementation of a career development program for staff.

Mayor Michael Regan said the draft Strategy was a response to the projected 8.5% increase in the population of children under nine by 2036.

“Our Children’s Services provide high quality early learning services in 16 Council-owned child care services including long day care, pre-school, vacation care and family day care,” Mayor Regan said.

“These services are loved by those who use them for the quality of care and development programs, engaged and well trained staff and affordability.

“This strategy takes a long term view of our services and recommends key actions for the next four years to ensure can continue to adapt and provide accessible, equitable and flexible services into the future.

“Through the early stages of the development of this strategy, the community identified the need for more services north of Narrabeen and in the Frenchs Forest area. This strategy commits us to considering how we can fill those gaps.

“Our community also asked more flexible options at all children’s services to cater for families with different needs which can vary throughout the year. The strategy recommends we trial some more flexible options to see how they work before more broadly implementing them to all our centres.

“And we have seen how beneficial intergenerational programs are both for children and seniors so we are going to look at creating a trial for our services in this space too.

“I encourage families and other stakeholders to have a look at what is propose and provide your feedback while the document is on public exhibition.”

The strategy will be on public exhibition until 19 January with a number of opportunities to provide feedback. You can view the document here.