MANY children that passed through the Wellington Point Day Care Centre are all grown up, with the centre celebrating 30 years of operation on January 23.
Since the centre opened in 1989, owner Dawn Hogan said it had undergone many changes to keep up with regulations and standards in the child care industry.
“So much has changed in regards to child care benefits and subsidies and kindy programs,” Ms Hogan said.
“(We’ve gone) from no fee assistance for families to assistance with fees to get parents back to work, and from educators requiring minimal studies to having teachers with university degrees in the centre for our kindergarten program.
“The staff to child ratio changes constantly (according) to regulation changes.
“(We also have) interactive screens and computers for the kindergarten children (and) iPads for the educators,” she said.
Ms Hogan added that the centre was beginning to see the second generation of children coming through.
“We now have families attending who attended as children themselves and we also have past children who have now joined us as staff members,” she said.
On January 23, the centre will be displaying photographs from the past 30 years to celebrate the milestone with children and parents old and new.
“We’ll be putting up a gallery of photographs and celebrating with a fun day,” she said.
“We’ll have a big cake, face painting, balloons and bubbles.”
Ms Hogan added that the journey had been long and sometimes difficult, but she was proud that the centre had grown and evolved with the times.