HOW TO START YOUR OWN 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 increase through the turn of
the century, and the popularity of this type of business to
continue growing from there. 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 experiences
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 baby-
sitting 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 ad just 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 neighborhood
areas should not be worried too much about competition from the
few company operated day care centers.

The first step toward start-up 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 realize annual profits in the "before taxes" bracket of
$100,000.

Check with your state and local government regulatory
agencies. Many states require day care centers to provide a
minimum area per child, both inside and outside 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 baby-sitting 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 - and build upon your progressive successes.
Unless, of course, you have half a million dollars to invest.

Once you're beyond the baby-sitting stage, out of your home
and backyard, beginning to build a real day care facility, you
might try locating in your church or one of your area's civic club
facilities. Also, you should check out the possibilities of
renting or buying a vacant house. A large ranch-style home with a
large backyard would probably suit your needs at this stage. But
be sure you have zoning approval from your city council before
signing a rent lease and finalizing your plans.

You might find, if you have your business plan in order, that
a church or labor union will sponsor your business, or even offer
financial backing. Arranging some sort of partnership or
sponsorship agreement with an established local organization will
solve a lot of problems for you, not only in the area of space but
in assistance with start-up costs and city-father approval.

Incidentally, a day care center is perhaps the ideal business
for absentee ownership or a group of professional investors. Keep
this fact in mind as you organize your plan and seek financing.
See our business report, How To Raise Money For Starting Your Own
Business.

Generally, a "shoestring entrepreneur" in this business will
do very well to locate in a vacant convenience store, or even a
vacant grocery store in a larger shopping center. The zoning will
be in your favor, plus you'll have adequate parking space, and
less expense in partitioning or remodeling the building to suit
your needs.

Ideally, your day care center should be located on a main
thoroughfare, with the building set back from the street. You
should be on the right hand side of the street as the traffic
heads towards the major business or industrial areas of your
community. In larger metropolitan areas, this would be on the
city-side of the "bedroom" communities. In smaller communities,
you can locate just about anywhere except in the downtown area.

If at all possible, you should 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 drive-thru, with the
driveway continuing back out to the street. Your long-term
parking space would then be located in the center of the "U" or
between the driveway and the street. You want to strive for the
convenience for the parent in being able to drive right up to your
door. She can drop off the child with only a few steps into your
facility and easy access back onto the main thoroughfare.

Depending on your city sign ordinances and your finances, go
all out with your sign. Advertise the name of your day care
center, the hours you're open, whether you accept drop-ins,
overnighters, or weekenders, and of course, 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 labor 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 are from 6 a.m. through 6 p.m. 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 wanting to feed their
children at home, you'll be able to add $8 to $12 per week to
their billing. By buying your food supplies in bulk, you'll
probably be able to realize some savings in overall food costs.

Mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks are required in some
states, but even where they're not required, they are pretty much
standard fare in most day care centers. Fresh fruit, cookies, and
juice are the usual snack foods served in most day care centers.

As mentioned earlier, you'll definitely be providing a hot
meal for the children at noon. This entails a cook, dishes,
planned menus, food supplies in bulk, and perhaps even small size
table 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 operate according to planned
routines. The day is broken down into one-hour segments, with
pre-planned curriculum, much the same as classes at a public
school.

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 story-telling 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 in to speak or entertain
the children.

Work with your Chamber of Commerce, civic clubs, and city
administration for guests. Children will especially enjoy visits
by policemen, firemen 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 upperclassmen 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
persons with teaching certificates. It's not so much a session to
teach proficiency as a time to stimulate interest in formal
education. The basic goal of most day care centers is to instill
within each child a desire to learn more about the world in which
he lives. Thus, each child should be full of plans for "when I
get to be six years old and start school, I'm going to..."

About once a week, your afternoon learning session should be a
tour or a trip to some place 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 ad venture as well.

These trips can be anything from a walk in your immediate
neighborhood to loading all the kids into cars or onto buses and
taking them to the zoo. Check it out first, but on the whole,
you'll find most businesses in your area will welcome
opportunities to show the children around their offices or
factories. The same thing quite naturally applies to your city
offices, fire department, police department, and radio or
television stations.

On days when you don't have a trip scheduled, your "learning
session" might be a film or program related to nature,
particularly animals. The advent of the Video Cassette Recorder
has opened endless possibilities in this area. Nap time and snack
time will fill a period for younger ones, and books and quiet
games will occupy older children who do not take a nap. When the
nap period is over, they're allowed to play until their parents
come by to pick them up.

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 organized
games, but you will have to have a playground supervisor - someone
to watch the children and see that they don't get hurt as they
play. You can hire part-time help for this chore, perhaps from
the local colleges, for minimum wage. If your city ordinances do
not cover the specific age requirements of a playground
supervisor, you might be able to hire students from your
neighborhood high school. Select all the people you hire relative
to their affinity with children and their dependability. Be aware
of today's climate of extreme concern in protecting children in
day care situations.

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 be comes ill, you should take him to the nearest medical
center, while another staff person gets in touch with the parents,
and explains what happened. If the parent cannot be present at
the medical center, all information should be passed on to him/
her immediately it is available.

It's a good idea to have all your helpers indoctrinated 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. You might
be able to "hire the license" of a registered nurse. You pay a
small fee to hang her license in your office, and she agrees to be
available to serve your needs when you call.

Most day care centers are currently charging from $35 to $65
per child for a five day week, plus $5 to $10 more for the
inclusion of breakfast, with another $l per meal when they serve
an evening meal to the child. If you do not receive pay in
advance, you can very quickly get "in the red." We strong
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 bookkeeping 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 payment by the month, in advance,
is that because monthly payments are based on only four weeks of
day care, they'll be getting a week of free service every three
months.

Every profitable day care center requires 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 oriented, 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 preconceived 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
supervision 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. A good
director for a day care center will command a salary equal to
teachers in your public schools, plus fringe benefit allowances
such as free enrollment for their children and perhaps medical and
dental insurance if you choose to provide group coverage.

When a prospective client calls to ask you about your
services, you should explain how you operate, and emphasize your
invitation for them to bring their child in so that the two of
them can be taken for a tour of your facilities.

Once in the center, your manager or director takes the parent
and child on a tour, all the while explaining to parent the
advantages of the centers structured learning and play program as
compared with everyday run-of-the-mill baby-sitting 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 administrative
offices and propose enrollment 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 parent)
kidnapping a child. Printed forms must be provided, and
authorization 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-file card giving address, place of employment,
medical information about the child, and place he or she may be
reached in case of emergency.

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 brought in to 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 "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 baby-sitting 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, with the husband serving also
as maintenance and handy-man.

Around-the-clock baby-sitting services, in addition to your
regular day care center, can add tremendous and immediate cash-
flow profits to your business, but correspondingly increase your
payroll for qualified personnel. Such services would enable the
parents to drop their children off in the evening, and leave them
around the clock or over the weekend. There will generally be no
need for any planned program because these children will be
sleeping during most of the time they're in your care.

As you establish the image and reputation of your day care
center, the parents in your area will be much more inclined to
leave their children with you for baby-sitting duties. And because
you are considered tops in the area of responsibility , you'll be
able to charge the very top rate of the baby-sitting fee
structure. Keep current with fees charged by other quality
businesses similar to yours.

The demand for unplanned or emergency baby-sitting services is
very large. Not too many day care centers are aware of this
potential for extra profits yet, 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.

Another area that could mean enhanced profits for you is bus
or van pick-up service for the children. Of course, this would
increase your operating costs (and consequently your fees) but the
convenience of pick-up is gaining in popularity. You'll need a
custodian for indoor and outdoor cleanup, and if you have access
to a bus or van, he could be assigned additional duties as the
driver. Some day care centers offering pick-up service for their
children contract with local transportation services to provide
this service. Be certain of the driving experience of your driver
if you contract for this transportation service.

Most day care centers open with very little fanfare or
advertising. Generally, even without advertising most are
reporting 90 percent capacity enrollment within six months.

With grand opening fanfare, and a strong advertising campaign,
you should be able to be at 90 percent capacity within your first
six weeks. In an area where a severe short age of day care
facilities exists, and with the right advertising and promotion,
even sooner.

Your first step should be the door-to-door, hand-out
distribution of a quality informative brochure. To save on costs,
you can hire students attending advertising classes in your area
colleges or even a free lance advertising copywriter to help you
with the design and writing of this brochure. However, the bottom
line should be that you have a good commercial printer do the
printing on the best paper you can afford. All of this has to do
with the image your wanting to create, and the quality of the
service the "buyers" feel they're getting for the prices you are
charging. Don't skimp on your brochure - you're aiming at people
looking for the best place for their children.

You should place at least a two-column by four-inch grand
opening display ad in your local newspapers. At the same time,
you should place similar ads in the local magazines and other
publications catering to the working mother. Send along a group
picture of your staff, and a story about your services with your
advertising order. Phone the editors at your local newspapers,
radio and TV stations and invite them out to your grand opening.

Be sure to place a "service information" ad in the yellow
pages of your telephone directory. This should be the largest size
you can afford. And remember that you need to make contact for a
yellow page ad well in advance of the release date of the
directory.

After your grand opening, and until you attain full capacity,
continue to hand out your brochures at the entrances to the office
buildings which house companies employing working mothers.
Continue to run ads in your local newspaper, although these ads
needn't be quite as large or run as regularly as the grand opening
ads. Run an ad in the classified section describing your baby-
sitting services.

At your grand opening, offer free refreshments for everyone.
Coffee and punch for the adults, with juice for the children, and
cookies for everyone. You should have members of your staff
circulating among the parents to answer any questions and hand out
brochures about the center.

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 c an 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 enrollment. You've got the plan, and
my best wishes for success!


Copyright © 2002-2003 EarthDome Web Services
All Rights Reserved
Request Reprint Permission Email to: Questions@earthdomeonline.com
 

Home