Category Archives: Start Child Care

Starting a Daycare Center (On a Tight Budget)

Posted on by

When preparing your budget for your new day care center, return often to your understanding of the core service you need to provide: a safe space with competent staff. Use this understanding to guide you as to where you can save money and where you must be ready to spend.

An Example – Food Service

One example is lunch service for the children in your day care. Day care centers may prepare fresh lunches in their own kitchen for children. However, having to build out a kitchen may add significantly to the capital you need to raise. What would happen if you cut the kitchen and instead ordered lunches out daily, working out the best deal possible with a local restaurant or store? You would cut not only the start-up cost, but also the electrical and maintenance costs associated with having the kitchen equipment. You could also devote more staff time to working with the children and avoid the daily labor of food preparation, and the periodic labor of ordering and maintaining supplies and ingredients. The direct cost of the meals would certainly be higher, but maybe you could pass on this cost to parents by explaining the benefits of outsourcing meals to a skilled business. This is the type of cost-saving analysis you should undertake. Continue reading →

Start a Child Daycare Business – Pricing Your Services

Posted on by

Many entrepreneurs wanting to enter the daycare business have lots of questions about how they should price their child care services. Let’s take a look at some of the factors that you may consider when formulating an approach to pricing for use in your daycare.

1) Don’t overprice your services. Unless you have an established brand or really have something unique to offer then you will miss out with this approach as parents can and do shop around.

2) Don’t price your services too low. Many new child care center operators think that a great way to get business fast when they are just starting out is to come out with pricing that is considerably lower than competitors. This approach could lead to customers perceiving the quality of your services to be poor. You may get some bargain hunters but you will barely be profitable and if you do try to raise prices later on you will have some disgruntled parents on your hands. If you do start a price war then you will damage the whole industry locally and all players will suffer as a result. Continue reading →

How to Report or Handle Potential Child Abuse

Posted on by

It may be shocking, but it is a fact that there are children that are traumatized by physical, sexual, and emotional abusers or by caregivers who ignore them. Actually, this happens each year and there are about thousands of children were abused. With this, the scar is truly deep and lasting that not only the kids are continually affected by the society as well. As an owner and manager of a daycare center, you need to learn the signs and symptoms of child abuse in order to know what to do and to get help.

There are four types of child abuse and these are physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. Continue reading →

Ways to Keep Your Child Care Center Germ Free

Posted on by

For busy parents, putting their kids to child care is the best choice. But of course, they would still worry about their kids since they can be exposed to germs. Definitely, you do not want to let your kids be exposed from colds, infections and viruses. As parents, you need to see to it that they can build their immune system, so they have to be germ-free.

As an owner and manager of your own child care business, you need to make sure that your facility is free from germs; this can make parents be secured as they leave their kids on your care. Washing hands, keeping the noses of the little ones and cleaning items that this article will mention are some of the things that you should do in order to gain germ-free facility. Continue reading →

An Analysis On Child Care Facilities Costs

Posted on by

There is a little doubt that a great percentage of working parent’s wages goes toward child care facilities. Parents need someone to take care of their children while they are working but sometimes wonder how they can ever afford to pay out such high fees.

The differences in charges vary from city to city, but no matter where the family is located, it sometimes causes doubt as to whether or not the second parent is simply working to pay for childcare. There are many things that can affect the cost, so before you begin looking, you need to be aware of the basics. Take a good look at your community when pricing child care facilities. Areas in New York City and Boston will have prestigious private preschools where the tuition is closer to thousands of dollars versus hundreds.

Lower income areas will have facilities within their pricing range. Both may offer quality child care but the more expensive school may be able to offer extras such as computer and foreign language instructors. Continue reading →

7 Guidelines to Open a Daycare Center

Posted on by

Are you planning to open a daycare center as a business? If you are, then you’re making the best decision. Planning a daycare center not only is fulfilling, but it gives you the chance to learn and interact with children, especially if you never had a child of your own. Although taking care of twenty or so kids might be very tiring; but at the end of the day, every sweat and tears is worth it. The smiling faces of the children will give you all the more reason to continue on.

If you want to venture into a job that gives you financial support as well as personal fulfillment, then a day care center is just right for you. However, to make this work, you have to follow some steps to get you started with your business.

With that, here are 7 ways to open a daycare center: Continue reading →

Licensing Your Daycare Center

Posted on by

One of the things that you should never overlook when you start your daycare business is getting your licenses. It’s kind of like driving–you know how to do it, but if you leave home without your license, that’s the day the cops will pull you over. You might think, but I’m running it out of my own home-it’s more like a glorified babysitting service, why should I bother with getting a license in the first place?

They may seem like one of those little things that you think you might not need, but they are more important than you think. Here’s why getting your daycare licensed will benefit YOU in the long run.

Accrediting or licensing your daycare center is normally required no matter what state you live in. Each state has different requirements and licenses that depend on the age of the children you intend to care for, where you run you daycare from, etc. A licensed day care center definitely gets more clients-parents don’t want to leave their children with just anyone. Majority of these licenses deal with safety and health concerns, as well as the rules and regulations one should follow to have a good, safe daycare center. Continue reading →

Starting a Day Care Business – No Kid Stuff, This!

Posted on by

Starting a day care business provides a great entrepreneurial opportunity if you love children. It could be the best thing you can do to earn an income. The size can range from a small home based operation on a shoe string budget to a large commercial center. It’s up to you to decide the course of your business – either choosing to remain small by creating work only for yourself or growing into an enterprise with large revenue.

Oh, before we go on, let’s set the record straight. Starting a day care business is not the same as the babysitting you did as a teenager. Providing a day care service is a very real business. You need to choose the services you will offer, identify the target child segment, and generally consider all those aspects that you would in any other line of commercial activity. Since the work involves caring for someone else’s children, it takes responsibility and serious commitment. Starting a day care business also has some specific requirements, which you need to be aware of. Continue reading →