Archive for 'Increasing'

Increasing Daycare Enrollment – Understanding How Parents choose a Daycare

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 10:00 am  
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Increasing Daycare Enrollment – Understanding How Parents choose a Daycare

A general business rule of thumb to follow is to understand your customer’s buying behavior first before starting your business. In the case of a daycare business, you should fully understand the buying behavior of parents first before starting your daycare center. Understanding what factors are important to parents when choosing a daycare center allows you to create an effect marketing strategy, and increase the chance of your daycare center’s success. The choice of daycare is a complex decision, but can be primarily attributed to the following factors in order of importance:

Atmosphere. Parents would like to see and feel a happy and nurturing environment – that is, happy children, caring and happy staff, friendly environment, and a clean place. A parent who positively connects with the teachers at an emotional level will greatly help as this will provide him/her with a sense of assurance that his/her child will be taken good care of. Wall decorations, children’s artwork posted on the walls, toys, books, room colors, and etc. are all factors that can contribute to a positive atmosphere. On the other hand, old toys and books, tired wall (e.g. walls that need a fresh coat of paint), and the lack of room color and decorations will produce a negative atmosphere.
Location and convenience. Daycare centers found in a locality most often serve the immediate neighborhood. Parents will select a daycare that is relatively near their residence and/or their place of work. Even parking or ingress / egress access can be a decision factor for most parents. The fact that a parent needs to drop-off and pick-up their child requires good ingress / egress access for the parent’s convenience.
Value driven. Depending on the demography, financial constraints play a considerable role in the decision-making process of the parent. A daycare that offers quality at a value-price could be the clinching factor in parents’ decision to enroll their child there.
Programming. Weekly lesson plans, parent involvement activities, programming, and the availability of different kinds of learning materials are critical in establishing a good learning environment for the child. In general, children learn everyday. However, for academically inclined parents, programming can become an important factor in their decision-making process. A daycare center that includes enrichment programs such as heritage activities, language lessons (e.g. English, French) or math programs can be a decision factor for some parents.
Facilities. The equipment available, cleanliness and general appearance of your facilities will differentiate your daycare center from other daycare centers. Examples include playground, play structure, gymnasium, security, air conditioning and etc. In extreme weather conditions such as a very hot summer day, or very cold winter day, a gymnasium is an asset, which allows children to stay indoor and receive their daily dose of gross motor skill activities (e.g. running and jumping).

Customer cost of switching daycare is high. The child’s attachment to the teacher and the other children at the center deters parents from switching daycare centers without putting deep thought into it. As a result, a customer of a one daycare will not normally switch to another daycare center.

For more daycare marketing tips and strategies, you can visit the marketing section of this How to Start and Manage a Daycare online tutorial.

For other topics on how to start and manage a daycare center including home daycares, please visit Parent Relief’s Resource section.

 

Important resources for daycare operators – Free!


1. Free Daycare Advertising – Parent Relief Online Directory

2. Free Daycare Software – Parent Relief bizAdvantage

3. Free Tips and Strategies – How to Start and Manage a Daycare online tutorial

 

Dan has been involved in starting and managing daycare centers for a number of years. This experience allows him to provide valuable advice on a wide range of topics on daycare management including daycare advertising, marketing, financial management, program design, room layouts and more.

Increasing Child Care Costs: Finding the Solution

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 at 6:34 pm  
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Increasing Child Care Costs: Finding the Solution

There is a positive correlation between the costs and quality of child care services provided and the employment rate among women. Single mothers, as the most economically vulnerable part of population, are the most sensitive to child care costs. Even though federal government is undertaking steps to increase financing of child care services, it is unable to cover the needs of parents, who fall under the criteria to receive financial support. Going even further then this, while the employment rate is relatively elastic to child care costs, when it comes to speaking about financial support offered by government, funding must be increased by as much as 50 per cent to bring fruitful results. As such, federal spending on child care services proves to be relatively inefficient. At the same time, many mothers choose to remain unemployed due to other problems with child care services such as uncertainty in the quality of services received or choose to compromise entering low paid jobs with adjusted schedule. As such, governmental role in setting standards for child care services provided can hardly be overestimated. Consequently, solution to the problem must be complex that involves both private and public sectors.

To find a solution to the problem, one should start from a basic decision making model of a mother. In the model, it is assumed that mothers of children are seeking utility maximization through child services and goods, which are, in its’ turn, a subject to four major constraints: a money constraint that combines both labor and non-labor income; a production function of child care services, such as quality of it and the perspectives opened by it; child’s time constraint and, finally, mother’s time constraint. As such, solution to the problem should consider the stated above factors in order to maximize the utility and in such way decrease the barriers of entry into the labor market of single mothers. The solution should address all four critical factors in order to be effective for single mothers, as for one of the most vulnerable groups of population. The solution must be a combination of cost minimization approach, which could be realized through transfer to the free market of the child care sector. The solution should also increase the level of certainty among mothers and deliver quality work, which could be realized through governmental control by setting the standards of services delivered. Finally, the solution should consider the age of the children, as the major determinant of the time constraint of both mother and child.

Jennifer Burns is a freelance academic writer at Custom-Writing.org, custom paper writing. Jennifer has completed a number of online assignments including tips on how to write an annotated bibliography. She is now willing to share own writing skills and expertise with students.