Things that i considered when picking Childcare

Great article Tee........I've worked in Child Care for 9 years and the Centre I work at is considered the best Centre in our area and I'm pretty proud to be a part of it. I only found it by chance too as I started as a student there while doing my diploma 9 years ago. All our staff have been there for 10 years, besides one of our part-timers, who is an ex-parent and our Trainee who only started this year. We all love working there and have a great relationship with our parents.

You're right about the word of mouth too..........choosing a child care centre can be so scary.....I know, I've seen and heard about some pretty bad places. The best indication is how open and friendly staff are, how happy the kid's are and if everyone looks like they actually want to be there.......because in reality child care is a pretty hard and highly stressful job, but a good carer doesn't show it.

Amanda xxxxx

Great advice.. and hope that this helps the mums that are looking Into childcare, and also all the best with all your plans..

xxx cazza

great advice

Thanks for the advice! My two cents -

The trend over the past ten years or so has been for childcare centers to do a lot more paperwork, such as writing report cards for very young children, filling out checklists or form about the conditions of the place, your child's behaviour etc. Whilst I understand that some parents may find this reassuring, please kep in mind that every moment spent writing a report card is one moment less spent interacting with your child.

I'm not saying that we should do report cards or keep records, I guess I just wanted to add that "How much time during the day do staff spend on paperwork?" is a good one to add to the list.

And the question about the staff turnover and how happy are they - it's hard to find a stronger indicator for the quality of a center than that!

Great article.

Hi honey,

Thanks for the GREAT tips that you have here . .  We are currently looking into some daycare for sumara so she can have some interaction with other little ones her own age . . For us the biggest issue has been about whether they can handle a child with multiple food allergies, you'd be amazed at how many centre's really are not equipped to handle this problem . .

cheers Kellz