Two years after the closure of a care home in Sliema run by the Ursuline Sisters, the facility is to reopen as a childcare centre. 

Known as the Ursuline crèche, it was shut in 2022 after EU policies called for the de-institutionalisation of children under the age of three. 

But now the Planning Authority has approved an application to convert the children’s residential home into a daytime child care centre on the ground floor level.

It means the nuns will be able to welcome children back into the building as they have done for the past 120 years.

Alterations will see the inclusion of an office, reception area, toilets, a kitchenette, activity areas and sleeping quarters for the little ones.

Ramps will also be built to make the place fully accessible and a concrete pool will be removed. 

The application filed by Sr Magdalene Cauchi was approved unanimously at a meeting of the Planning Commission, chaired by PA deputy chairman Martin Camilleri, on Wednesday. 

In an interview with Times of Malta as the home’s doors were closing, Sr Cauchi had said the number of babies and infants at the crèche had been dropping since 2020 until the last three children left the Sliema home in February 2022. They had moved to the children’s home in Guardamangia, also run by the sisters of St Angela Merici.

“Even though our doors have closed, we still find a way to help those who need it most with food, clothes, prams and playpens, among other things. And we give from the heart.”

The sisters were among the first to take on the care of children in need.

“Back in 1958 or 1959, we sent two of our sisters from the Guardamangia home to specialise in care in the UK. At the time that was a big thing.”

The two nuns brought back with them the concept of a children’s home in the form of a flat and that was how the layout of the Guardamangia home evolved into independent flats, each with its own facilities and with children of different age groups in the care of a nun who took on the role of the mother.