May 2012 Moms
MrsAJ11
member
Options
You get what you pay for? (Childcare)
MrsAJ11
member
Hi Fellow Bumpies!
DH and I casually started looking at home daycare providers in our area. As with most things, they seem to vary in price. Obviously, I realize price, though important, is only one of many factors to consider when choosing a provider.
My question is, do you believe the saying "You get what you pay for"
applies to childcare? Generally speaking, would paying an extra $100 a week give my child
better care? Perhaps there's no real answer to this question, but it certainly crossed my mind. I'd like to know your thoughts!
Thanks!
Warning
No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
This discussion has been closed.
Re: You get what you pay for? (Childcare)
I think it's true to an extent but there are expensive daycares that a horrible and affordable ones that are great. I've worked in both good daycares and really bad ones. The worst one was very expensive. I'm sure to the parents it looked great but there were things the didn't see/ know about that were horrible.
I now do at home daycare and I don't charge much at all. I've been a single mom who had trouble affording good childcare so I wanted to offer childcare that was good but affordable.
We are having a friend of mine that has an almost-3-year-old and an almost-1-year-old that does medical transcriptioning at home watch our baby for at least the first year, maybe year and a half. After that, we may look into a center. But daycare in MN is quite expensive (a center would cost about $1,000 a month), and my friend is going to do it for $400/month. I also help her out watching her kids as well.
After a year or so, we may look into a center, so the child can get a lot more "teaching" during the day when we're not able to. But, my friend has also done a great job with her kids, so we'll see at that point.
I have worked in many daycare centers before. I have been in some that are high priced and wonderful and others that are also high priced, but I would not want my child there for a few reasons.
FWIW we plan on looking into home daycares. I do think they are affordable and if you find the right one they can be absolutely wonderful.
I'm intrigued. I don't mean to hijack the post, but I'm curious what types of things we should look for?
Then came a miscarriage March '11
Then came a baby in the baby carriage May 16, 12
Waiting on our second little peanut!
There weren't things that a parent could see on a tour and would have been lied to if they had asked about.
I was allowed to start work before my background check came back but wasn't legally allowed to be alone with the kids. In the infant room there was suppossed to be 1 adult for every 4 babies. On my first day of work I was left alone with 9 babies for over two hours and my background check wasn't back.
Workers in the infant room smoked and were in those clothes while holding newborns. They also didn't wash their hands after smoke breaks.
There were plans in place for a Tornado and Fire. The door that the babies in cribs were suppossed to be pushed through wasn't big enough for a crib and neither were any of the other doors. If there had been a fire not all of the babies could have been saved. I found out when a siren was going off that the area for the Tornado was being used as storage for furniature. Thank god the tornado didn't hit the daycare.
The kids weren't fed as much as they should have been. The daycare was part of the federal food program but kids weren't offered milk with luch except maybe once a week and a little debbie was breakfast. The menu parents had said something very different. We were also told to lie to parents about what their kids eat because parents like to hear their kids at the veggies.
If someone tried to call in for being sick they were threatened with losing their job. It didn't matter if they had a fever and were throwing up or had to Roto virus they caught from work. We didn't get sick days. Parents were lied to about this too. A lot of kids got sick that didn't' have to and the roto virus put some in the hospital.
Things weren't sanitized the way they were suppossed to be legally and they way parents were told they were with the exception of when the health inspector was there.
The parents were told about all this training the workers had. It was a joke. I was there a year and went to 1 3hr class after I'd been there 6mo. There was no consistancy with anything with the kids. The owner brought parents on a tour in my room and was talking about how disipline, potty training, naps, outside time, lessons, and activities were done. That was the first time I had heard there was a specific way they wanted me to do things. I had DS1 and had worked in a great daycare before so I know what worked and was apropriate but not all workers were like me.
There were so many other things that parents were lied to about but there wasn't really a way they could have verified it.
The daycare had an open door policy but the owner knew when the parents usually came. When someone was new we were told to do some things differently until that parent's usual times could be figured out.