UPPER NAZARETH TWP., Pa. – Gracedale Nursing Home in Northampton County is preparing to welcome some of its youngest guests.<\/p>\n
Twenty children, ranging from infants to 12 years old, will soon be the first enrollees at Gracedale\u2019s new on-site daycare, Learning Locomotion.<\/p>\n
While the focus may appear to be on the children, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure says the initiative is really about supporting their parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need daycare at Gracedale to recruit and retain employees,\u201d McClure said.<\/p>\n
He said the daycare is the latest benefit designed to ensure Gracedale has the staff it needs.<\/p>\n
The county recently updated its hiring and compensation packages and now pays for qualified employees to earn their CNA, LPN and RN degrees.<\/p>\n
The daycare setup cost about $2 million and was funded through the American Rescue Plan Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be very heavily subsidized and free because we need to recruit and retain nurses here at Gracedale so our residents can continue to get the high-quality care they\u2019ve come to enjoy and expect,\u201d McClure said.<\/p>\n
The daycare is scheduled to open Nov. 3.<\/p>\n
Gracedale employees, like unit clerk Jade Weaver, say they\u2019re excited to enroll their children.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll definitely work out, since I work right across the unit here,\u201d Weaver said. \u201cBeing able to drop them off and get here on time\u2014it\u2019ll be good not having to miss any work.\u201d<\/p>\n
McClure said while the daycare is starting with 20 children, it has the capacity for 71 and could eventually expand to include children of employees who work elsewhere in the county.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UPPER NAZARETH TWP., Pa. – Gracedale Nursing Home in Northampton County is preparing to welcome some of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,5957,4688,5960,2021,434,5958,28,5959],"class_list":["post-6605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-child-care","tag-executive","tag-jade-weaver","tag-lamont-mcclure","tag-northampton-county","tag-nursing-home","tag-pennsylvania","tag-unit-clerk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}