CHILD CARE CENTER

Child Care Center

Child Care Center

The Children Center

The Children Center is a full-service child care/development facility that cares for toddlers from age three to five. The Toddler Warehouse will be concentrating on the upper end of the market: double-income professional parents. These personally ambitious parents are typically eager in terms of their children's development and will be willing to pay to have their children attend the best facilities.

Through specialized training of the staff and innovative learning systems, The Toddler Warehouse is cutting edge in terms of child development. This curriculum, coupled with a custom designed facility and a low teacher: student ratio ensures a top shelf service for the children and the parents.

Operation of a child care center, particularly one committed to providing high-quality care affordable for low-income families, requires very strong management skills. Whether your CBO will operate the center itself or select an operator, you will have a vital interest in being certain that the needed management skills and systems are in place. Key management challenges include(Ainslie 1984 pp.78-79): 

Financial planning and analysis: Business planning skills are essential for successful operation. Management must be capable of understanding the impact of fixed and variable costs, the importance of customer relations and collections, techniques to monitor financial performance and strategies to improve the center's financial position. Management must be able to select, supervise and evaluate accounting staff, participate actively in budget development and understand standard financial statements. 

Rapid response to shifting revenue and expense factors: Management must be capable of rapid response to adverse financial conditions. Child care management requires constant attention to the relationship among enrollment, attendance and staffing levels. 

Managing collections: Both parent fees and government subsidy payments require constant, systematic attention to collections. Management must establish collections policies, systems and procedures and implement them consistently. Management must be able to impose credit limits, including potentially refusing care for families that have not fulfilled their financial commitments. 

Relationships with subsidy programs: Management must establish and maintain positive relationships with state and other subsidy programs. This will help facilitate solving payment problems. 

Staff recruitment, training, supervision and retention: Strong staffing is the most essential element in the quality of child care. Children need consistent relationships with caring adults who are fully aware of the child's developmental needs and capable of providing guidance that promotes development and positive self-esteem. Because child care workers' wages are almost always very low, recruiting and retaining excellent child care workers is an essential management skill. 

Parent relations: Successful child care center managers communicate effectively with parents. Parent satisfaction is critical for maintaining full enrollment. 

Regulatory compliance: Child care center managers must understand and oversee compliance with myriad regulations. Centers are subject to regularly scheduled and unannounced inspections. Management must ensure ongoing compliance and be capable of responding quickly to concerns raised by regulators. In most cases, successful operation will require management with substantial business skills. It is probably a mistake to select as a child care manager an individual who has only early childhood education training and experience. Many excellent pre-school teachers or early childhood program directors in grant-funded programs are not prepared to meet the financial management challenges that operating a non-grant-funded center will require. 

Environment

The physical design of your child care facility will have enormous impact on its financial viability. Licensing requirements specify both the number of children that each adult may care for and the number of indoor and outdoor square feet required for each ...