Inspirational and Empowering Child Care Business Owners To Build Successful Child Care Businesses

Archive for the ‘Home Daycare’ Category

5 Ways to Build Enrollment

The #1 way to have a successful childcare business is by building and maintaining enrollment. Child care is a need all over the world. Working parents and College students all over the world need childcare. The key is to find out where they are and draw them to you. Here are five ways to build enrollment:

1. Offer a Trial Day. Offering a trial day sends that message that you are confident about your program and you want them to give it a try.  In most cases, if the child loves the program, the parents will too.

2. Create an incentive program for your current customers/parents to tell other families about your program. Offer a discount when the referred family enrolls.

3. Get the Staff involved. At weekly meetings, announce your enrollment openings and encourage staff members to tell families about the program. Offer a monthly bonus or incentive to staff members that refer families.

4. Hang Balloons along your playground fence. This will draw attention to your building and give the impression that you are open for childcare business.

5. Advertise, Advertise! If parents do not know that your business exist, they will not come to you. Here are some suggestions to boost exposure to your program: advertise with your local yellow pages, the local child resource and referral agency, place flyers in local businesses, send flyers to the local schools, create a free website and join free social networking sites such as facebook, twitter and myspace.

Category:

Child Care Center, Enrollment Building, Home Daycare

Safe Outdoor Play

  

According to Westbend Insurance, over 500,000 children a year are injured on playgrounds; 100,000 to 200, 000 of those injuries require emergency room care. Moreover, most injuries occur on climbing equipment, while most injuries occur on home or private playgrounds.  

To assure safe outdoor play, West Bend insurance recommends that child care programs create  loss prevention strategies and they are as follows:  

  •   Check that protective surfacing extends at least six feet in all directions from play equipment.
  •  Make sure structures more than 30 inches tall are spaced at least 9 feet apart.
  • Check for dangerous hardware, like open “S” hooks or protruding bolt ends.
  • Make sure spaces that could trap children, like guardrail opening or ladder rungs, measure less than 3.5 inches or more than 9 inches.
  • Check for sharp points or edges in equipment.
  • Look out for tripping hazards, like exposed concrete footings, tree stumps, and rocks.
  •  Make sure elevated surfaces, like platforms and ramps, have guardrails to prevent falls.
  • Check playgrounds regularly to see that equipment and surfacing are in good condition.
  • Carefully supervise children on playgrounds to make sure they’re safe.
  • Make sure there is at least 12 inches of wood chips, mulch, sand and/or pea gravel around the playground equipment.

Evaluate your playground using this criteria provided by the National Program for Playground Safety: 

Find out your playgrounds Grade!

Category:

Child Care Center, Health/Safety, Home Daycare, Quality Care

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