Province gives Mac Kids money for special needs facility

The McGuinty government is pledging $3.5 million toward the construction of a new building, for McMaster Children’s Hospital‘s special needs services.

This is going to take place at Mac’s Chedoke hospital site, on Hamilton’s west mountain. The hospital says about 60,000 kids get treatment there every year. But the facilities are now spread over four aging buildings. The children’s services are now going to be moved into one brand new building, specially designed for the purpose.

Children’s Services Minister Laurel Broten says it’s about time. “The facilities are a bit old. For those of you in Hamilton these facilities were built in 1906. We need to see some modern, state-of-the-art facilities.”

Those facilities are expected to be completed in about four years.

Hamilton Health Sciences President Murray Martin expects it to make a big difference in being able to deliver services. “It will allow us more capacity because many of the program areas, we see things like autism, the need for growth in the program size, we are somewhat limited now by our facilities.”

The hospital has been working on this for years. It says this will go a long way toward making sure that children and families from throughout the region will get the services they need.

The provincial government says the money has nothing to do with an election coming up in four months.

Al Sweeney has more: