The availability and amount of activities is a factor in determining the quality of child care. According to Heidi M. Ferrar's "Places for Growing," children must experience a variety of activities daily, split evenly between individual, small group and large group activities. Plan your day accordingly, so that each child experiences each one of these three types of activities.
Additionally, more play tools equals more possible activities, so include more age-appropriate toys for each child.
Because parents serve as the primary educators for their children, you must involve them in the child’s day care experience. There are several ways to do this, according to Places for Growing. Spend a minute with the parents at the beginning and end of each day. The parent can tell you in the morning of any concerns from the previous day. In the evening, you can provide parents with information which can be used at home to re-enforce the lessons learned during the day.
Additionally, you can hold a “Parent Week,” wherein parents and guardians can come to interact with their kids. This allows the parents and staff to create a working relationship and to better understand the child’s daily exercises.
One way to increase child care availability, especially with nonprofit centers, is to reduce labor costs by employing parent-teachers and student interns. Every day, include one parent-teacher or student intern that works with the children on a volunteer basis. This serves a dual purpose for parents: it gets them actively involved their child’s education while reducing the paid staff and thus saving tuition costs. This format provides interns education.
If including volunteer workers reduces paid staff by one worker, your day care will save $23,671 annually, based on the average day care worker salary reported by Payscale.com. Split among 30 children, each family would save more than $750 annually.
Provide a sliding scale for lower income families. You can increase the availability of child care and the quality of child care for low-income families by doing this. High-income parents will pay full price whereas low-income families will make a partial payment. Hold fundraisers and encourage donations from the community to subsidize this program.
Additionally, you could seek state or grant funding. For example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides government grants for day care services. This can help lower the cost of admission for the children of economically disadvantaged parents.