Home And Family

Parents would want only the safest places for their children. When choosing a daycare center where you would be leaving your child most of the time, you have to ensure that they strictly follow laws, regulations and rules on safety as well as for producing a conducive learning environment for your child.

You need to check whether your provider is able to meets the requirements needed for fire safety. There should be fire alarms and smoke detectors scattered all throughout the center as well as clearly marked fire escape plan that staff and parents can refer to. You should also check whether the mats and cots mattresses used in the center are fire retardant. Centers should also carry out fire drills to ensure that everyone can do what needs to be done. You may also check with the local authority for other regulations that applies.

For class sizes, you have to check that newborn children until one year are infants having exclusive needs and care requirements. Most providers keep a little higher rates for infants. 12 months until 2 and half years old are considered as toddlers. Two and half year olds up to four or five are considered as kindergarten.

You may check with your local authority regarding the stipulations on how many children can a care provider should handle as well as the space needed for each child in the facility. Parent should how many children are in the care of a provider at a certain time and what are the ages of the children. You can also check with local authorities regarding the rules applied in your area.

Most providers have this quite usual practice of paying for sick days and being absent. Parents are not really paying for the service but for the slot reserved as the service for your child cannot be used or occupied by another child. This allows child care providers to generate some budget according to the number of children that they watch and pay for: staff, food for the kids, toys as well as other supplies.

If you think this is a serious matter, you should therefore find a center charging only for the actual day that your child is there. You can opt for smaller home facilities as they don’t charge for sick days

Aside from these, you may also check the minimum age for a child to be legally left home alone and unsupervised as this usually differ from state to state. Being home alone also means the right age of child watching another even if the other child is a sibling. What you can do to find the legal age for a child to be left unsupervised in your area is by contacting your area’s department of social services dealing with child care. You should not simply believe in what your friends tell your or your neighbours as they could have outdated or erroneous information. You may also check out the required supervisory conditions such as availability of a neighbour, contact numbers as well as if it is needed that the older kid should have some training of some kind.