'It’s a big milestone': New CK children’s treatment centre expanding

The new Chatham-Kent Children’s Treatment Centre is taking a big next step in its expansion process.

The foundation is down, and steel is coming Monday to raise the new home of the treatment centre off the ground.

"It's a big milestone on our schedule," said Executive Director Donna Litwin-Makey.

"The steel is really a meaningful step, becomes really real for our community and for our centre and kids."

The treatment centre moved into its current home in the early 1980's. Washrooms have been turned into office space and a new place is desperately needed.

"This centre here was built for just a few hundred kids, and we see all together over 5,000 now," Litwin-Makey said.

The $59 million 58,000 sq. ft. building will double the size of the current facility. It'll be fully accessible and have therapy rooms, a gym, teen life-skill lounge, a bigger pool and more.

"We have group space and parent space or a really big functional multi-purpose gym for a lot of programs that we have never been able to do here," Litwin-Makey told CTV News.

Current programs, like audiology and music therapy, will be enhanced in the new building.

"It'll be a great place where we'll just be able to have instruments out and easy access, rather than having to store them in many different other areas of the building," said music therapist Heather Sarson.

Mike Genge, president of the Children's Treatment Centre Foundation, said the six-acre property allows for future growth and is close to a trio of schools on McNaughton Avenue, near Bear Line Road.

"We bought the property and then like two years later, I had a developer come to me and say, ‘we'll triple the price of that property if you sell to us’, so we knew we had the right property," he said.

One in five kids in Chatham-Kent use the treatment centre and Genge said another 1,000 kids are on a waiting list.

"And that sucks," Genge said.

"So, getting this new facility expanded, doing what we're doing, having the government support as well as the community support means a lot for our kids and that's why we do all of this."

Construction is expected to be complete by the spring of 2026.