HOW TO START AND OPERATE A DAY CARE CENTER
There's a definite need for day care centers as more and more
mothers of pre school age children are forced to find jobs outside
the home. This is due in part to the current economy, and
unfortunately, to the high divorce rate, which means mothers who
might ordinarily stay at home and care for their own children must
seek income to help make ends meet.
Many experts expect the demand to continue to increase as it has been
for years. They base their forecasts on the fact that
more and more young parents have happy memories of the time they
spent in day care centers, and the learning experience they
enjoyed. And again, there is the continuing need or desire of
young mothers to work outside the home.
Profitable day care centers are much more than glorified
babysitting services. Social researchers have found that the most
important years in a child's development are those from one to
six. Thus, the exposure to the world in which he lives, the
instruction he receives, and the habits he forms during those
years, definitely affect his ability to learn and properly adjust
as he progresses on through his years of formal education.
For mothers of today - usually better educated than their mothers
- are more aware of these factors and wanting the best for their
children, are demanding the structured pre-school education and
learning stimulation offered by modern day care centers. This is
an honest desire of the mothers of pre school age children - even
those who aren't forced to work outside the home.
Another thing in your favor: Even though there seems to be a
trend for many large companies to finance and operate day care
centers for their employees in or close by their factories or
office buildings, studies show that most working parents prefer to
leave their children closer to home than where they work. Thus,
privately operated day care centers in residential areas should
not be worried too much about competition from the few company
operates centers.
The first step towards a startup of a profitable day care center
is to understand what makes them profitable.
There are a lot of day care centers operating with full
enrollments of 35 to 65 children, but just barely breaking even.
This is generally the result of regulations imposed by the state
government, causing exorbitant overhead costs of operation.
Basically, you'll need facilities to handle 150 to 200 children in
order to realise annual profits in the "before tax" bracket of
$250,000.
Check with your local council about regulations. Many require day
care centers to provide a minimum area per child, both inside and
out the building, plus at least one hot meal per day. A licensed
teacher for every 15 to 20 children, and even a licensed nurse on
the premises may be required. Be sure to know the regulations in
your area, and then design your business plan to meet these
regulations.
Actually, you can begin by operating a babysitting service, by
learning and expanding from your profits, and of course, through
the long term benefits of establishing a quality image. In fact,
we recommend that you do start small - with a baby sitting service
- ad build upon your progressive successes. Unless of course, you
have half a million dollars to invest!
Once you're beyond the babysitting stage, out of your home, and
backyard, beginning to build a real day care facility, you might
try locating in a local civic club facility. Also, you should
check out the possibilities of renting or buying a vacant house.
You might find, if you have your business plan in order, that a
church or lab or union will sponsor your business, or even offer
financial backing. Arranging some sort of partnership or
sponsorship agreement with an established local organisation will
solve a lot of problems for you, not only in the area of space but
in assistance with start up costs, etc.
Ideally, your day care center should be located on a main street,
with the building set back from the street.
If at all possible, plan your facility similar to a hospital or
motel entrance. This would be a driveway from the street to your
door, usually under a covered driveway, for convenience of picking
up and dropping children off.
Depending where you are located, go all out with your sign.
Advertise the name of your care center, the hours you are open,
and your phone number.
The sign makers and advertising people may strongly advise you
against so much wording on your sign, but in this instance, don't
listen to them. Your sign should state all essential information,
and serve to convince passers by that you can handle their child
care problems whenever the need arises.
If you initially locate in, or through the sponsorship of a church
or lab or union, these people can assist you tremendously by
including a mention of your services in their membership
bulletins, and by passing out circulars or flyers.
You'll need to decide on your regular day care hours. Generally,
these will be between 6am and 6pm. You'll also need to decide
whether you want to offer breakfast for the children. If so,
you'll have to plan for a cook and food supplies for morning
meals. We'll discuss kitchen facilities and kitchen help later,
but the first decision must be if you will include breakfast.
You'll already be set up with kitchen facilities and a cook
because you will be serving a noon meal. If you do decide to
offer breakfast for those parents not having the time to feed
their children at home, you'll be able to add $20 to $24 per week
to their bills. By buying your food in bulk, you'll probably be
able to get some real savings in overall food costs.
Mid morning and mid afternoon snacks are often required, but even
when they're not required, they are pretty much standard to offer.
Fresh fruit juice, and fruit or biscuits are usually the snack
foods served in most day centers.
As mentioned earlier, you'll definitely be providing a hot meal
for the children at mid day. This entails a cook, dishes, planned
menus, food supplied in bulk, and perhaps even small sized tables
and chairs. You'll also have to have kitchen help and facilities
for washing the dishes.
These are just some of the important overhead costs you must plan
for, and of course you will work to keep them as low as possible.
As you should know by now, the greater your overhead, the more
children you're going to have to take in, and the more children
you take in, the greater your space requirements.
All profitable day care centers operating according to planned
routines. The day is broken down into one hour segments, with pre
planned curricula, much the same as classes in normal schools.
A typical day begins with a play period from whenever the
children arrive until about 9 o'clock. For this, you'll need
indoor sand boxes, toys, and perhaps a family sized television
set. From 9 to 10, the children are separated into groups -
generally by ages - and you hold a reading or storytelling
session. The mid morning snack time is scheduled sometime between
10 to 11. For the younger children, this might include a mid
morning nap. After snack time, a learning session is usually
held. Typically, this is the time when guests are invited to
speak or entertain the children.
Work with your Chamber of Commerce, civic clubs, and city
administrator for guests. Children will especially enjoy visits
by policemen, fireman and others who talk to them about
citizenship, show films, and teach them about the things they do
in the community.
You can also get upper classmen at your local colleges to visit
and demonstrate such things as drawing, working with clay,
building with wood, making things out of paper, and hundreds of
other talents or skills they might be learning. The important
thing is to bring "outsiders" in to talk to the kids about what
goes on in their world.
Noon to 1 o'clock is generally lunch time, and from 1 until 2 is
another learning session. During this afternoon learning session,
you might offer the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic.
these teaching chores can be handled by college students studying
to be teachers, retired teachers, or unemployed teachers.
About once a week, your afternoon learning session should be a
tour or a trip to somewhere that might be interesting as well as
educational for the children. Again, you're making the idea of
learning not only interesting but an exciting adventure as well.
These trips can be anything from a walk in your immediate area to
loading all the children onto minibuses and taking them to the
zoo.
Whenever possible, you should encourage the children to be outside
during play periods. If you have lots of playground equipment,
you won't necessarily always have to have organised games, but you
will have to have playground supervisors - someone to watch the
children and see that they don't get hurt as they play. You can
hire part time help for this.
Your playground will require a fenced in area. Drive around and
look at the playground equipment in the play yards of your public
schools, and at day care centers in your area. You should have
the basic sandboxes, swings, slides, and jungle gyms, but in this
area you can be creative and original, provided your equipment
meets safety standards.
Some states require that you have a registered nurse on the
premises, but generally, the main things needed are medical
information from the parents and a written procedure to follow in
case of accident or illness. Basically, when a child is injured
or becomes ill, you should take him to the nearest hospital, while
another member of staff gets in touch with the parents and
explains what has happened. If the parents cannot be present at
the hospital, all information should be passed onto them,
immediately it is available.
It's a good idea to have all your helpers indoctrined with basic
Red Cross first aid knowledge, and have a well equipped first aid
kit on the premises. As for any requirements, relative to a full
time nurse, you should be able to hire registered nurses who are
either not working or looking for extra income.
Most day care centers are currently charging from $70 to $130 per
child for a five day week, plus $20+ for the inclusion of
breakfast. If you do not receive payment in advance, you can
quickly get "in the red". We strongly suggest setting up your
financial structure and clients' payment schedules with this in
mind.
By having your customers pay in advance, you'll eliminate a lot of
book-keeping chores and time, the problems of collections, and
you'll have operating funds with which to run the business. A
point to stress when asking for payments by the month, in advance,
is that because most payments are based on only four weeks of day
care, they'll be getting a free week every three months.
Every profitable day care center needs a sharp manager or
director. This person might be yourself, or someone you hire for
the job. Regardless, this person will be the key to your success.
The director should have an empathy with people, be an excellent
judge of people, be sales orientated, and have an outgoing
personality. As much as anything else, this person must have the
ability to listen to, and really hear what other people are saying
without the influence of pre-conceived opinions, or making snap
decisions. This person has to have the success of your business
in mind at all times, which means building and maintaining an
impeccable reputation.
Your director will be responsible for the hiring and supervising
of your other help and the budgeting, scheduling and overall day
to day operation of the business. It is imperative to the success
of your business that you have the very best person you can get in
this position, regardless of the cost.
When a prospective client calls to ask you about your services,
you should explain how you operate, and emphasise your invitation
for them to bring their child in so that the two of them can be
taken for a your of your facilities.
Once in the center, your manager or director takes the parent and
child on a tour, all the while explaining to the parents the
advantages of the center's structured learning and play program
as compared with everyday run of the mill babysitting services.
It's important to have the child along, because as he sees the
other children at play, he will be drawn to them, and this will
greatly influence the parent in deciding that your center is the
right place for his child.
After the tour, steer the parent back into your offices, and
propose enrolment of the child. Begin by asking where the parent
works, what hours and if he or she ever has to work overtime. You
then ascertain the hours they'll want to drop off and pick up
their child.
Strict procedures are absolutely essential regarding the pick up
of any child. Frightening as it may be to contemplate, we have
all read accounts of strangers (or non custodial parents)
kidnapping a child. Printed forms must be provided, and
authorisation signatures must be compared when anyone other than
the legal guardian takes a child from your care. You will learn
these requirements from your licensing office. Our advice to you
is to follow them meticulously.
You should have a slickly printed quality brochure showing your
rates, your services, an outline of the curriculum, and a
statement of your benefit goals for the children.
Check with a legally qualified person about the need for a
contract. The parent will probably simply fill out a
questionnaire about the child, medical information, emergency
numbers, etc.
Most day care centers accept all children between two and six
years of age. And there are many nowadays who take infants from
six weeks.
Of course, your personnel in this situation will be thoroughly
oriented in infant care, and you must ascertain if these babies
are well when bought into you. Otherwise you put yourself in the
position of "hospital" care instead of day care.
Generally, children aren't allowed to bring toys from home. You
may want to allow the children to bring their own blanket from
home for nap time, but if you allowed toys from home you would be
opening a Pandora's box of possible problems relating to sharing
and ownership. In light of this, you will want a full complement
of appropriate toys and play items in your center.
If you decide to include short term babysitting services, a good
idea would be to include within the layout of your facilities a
small one bedroom apartment for a live in person or couple. An
older retired couple would be ideal, if the husband could serve as
a maintenance and handy man as well.
The demand for unplanned or emergency babysitting services is very
large. Not too many day care centers are aware of the potential
for extra profits, but the ones that are, find that their incomes
can increase by 30 percent or more! We certainly recommend
consideration of this idea for anyone involved in a day care
service.
You can begin small, and expand in stages with your profits.
However, you must draw up a long range plan detailing exactly what
you intend to do, and each milestone you'll have to pass before
proceeding to your next goal. In this way, you can succeed and
attain not only the ultimate business, but also the kind of
profits planned at the start.
The basic, and bottom line secret to success with your own day
care center will be your ability to hold your costs in line while
achieving maximum capacity enrolment. You've got the plan, and my
best wishes for success!
