Hamilton Childcare Centre has been bursting at the seams, with enrolments growing and the Newcastle population swelling.

The completion of a newly renovated building, funded by the NSW Department of Education, will mean the service can welcome more children to the early childhood education and care service in the Hunter region of NSW.

The expanded playrooms will mean the service can accommodate eight additional preschoolers every day, increasing the total approved places to 44 a day.

Hamilton Childcare Centre Director, Kylie Kirrage, said she was pleased the new-look and bigger playroom was complete and open for the children to enjoy and play in.

“Our waitlist was long and grows fairly quickly and found we weren’t able to take a lot of children off it, especially those three, four and five-year-olds,” Ms Kirrage said.

“It was important for us to find a way to increase the number of children we have on site each day, but we were stuck with the floor plan and didn’t have enough room.”

“We saw the grant as an opportunity to do some alterations and provide us with more space, which is exactly what it has done.

“The kids have gravitated to the new spaces, and they use it as a creative and imaginative play area.”

The purpose-built playrooms benefited from a $100,000 grant through the Start Strong Capital Works program that aims to improve access to preschool by creating additional preschool places in areas of need and demand across the state.

In its 10 years of operation, the program has invested $90 million through awarding 178 grants that have created new preschool places in areas of need and demand across NSW.

NSW Department of Education Director of Sector Program, Peter Harvey, welcomed the completion of the project.

“It is wonderful to see so many young families from across Newcastle able to enjoy this brand-new preschool, providing our youngest learners with access to early childhood education and care,” he said.

“The department understands that accessing early childhood education and care can be challenging, especially in regional and rural areas and we know that families here have been facing waitlists due to a high demand for affordable early childhood education and care.

“We are so proud this brand-new build will help meet local demand and cater to the region’s growing population by increasing enrolment capacity with an additional eight licensed places now available here at Hamilton Childcare Centre.

“This is so important because research shows that 90 per cent of a child’s brain development happens by the age of five and children who participate in a quality preschool education program for at least 600 hours in the year before school arrive at school equipped with the social, cognitive, and emotional skills they need to learn. ”