In-home Daycares

EmilyGolden1 · January 2014

I have noticed some women in this group are going with inhome daycares which look to be a bit less expensive--I'm all for it and am wondering how you found your provider?! I am in Chicago with ridiculous daycare prices ex. 1800-2200 per month! I was on care.com and cheers for moms and really haven't found much for advertisting of in-home daycares. When I search for in-home it often brings me to nannys who will come to me-which would be awesome but too expensive.

Thoughts?!

ykristos · January 2014

The daycares in Boston/Cambridge run ~$2k-3k for infant daycare, so I've been looking at this well. I was able to find lists of licensed providers, phone numbers, websites, and addresses on a state gov website.

pistolpackinmomma · January 2014

Maybe check craigslist or local classified ads? Word of mouth?

EmilyGolden1 · January 2014

I have been looking at craigslist but have only found a few sketchy places---word of mouth---I would LOVE but don't know many moms locally

sweetky_06 · January 2014

If you have a friend who is a teacher - check with them to see if they have heard of anyone. It may seem weird, but in my area in-home daycare providers seem to cater to teachers - maybe because of the hours they want to keep?

Cost is a huge factor, but one thing to consider is that in-home providers generally have more restrictive hours (like 7:30-5:30 or something similar) so make sure that works for you. You'll also want to understand what their vacation policies are (my sister's provider took one week off in August and 1 week at Christmas that they had to pay for but there was no care those weeks) and potentially deal with that single provider calling you telling you they are sick/have appts/etc and you'll need to deal with that. If your job is flexible it might not be a big deal, but an advantage of a center is you don't have to deal with that.

pistolpackinmomma · January 2014

Maybe find a moms group and ask around? Pedi office? I don't know. I SAH so we haven't had to worry about DC.

mirdamae03 · January 2014

We share a nanny with DH's cousin and her children. It's economical and we have the children in our house. You might see if you have anyone to go in with you on an in(your)home nanny.

brittcraw75 · January 2014

We're using a lady we know, so not exactly in-home daycare, but I'll weigh in, anyway.

It's been a fortunate blessing that she has just recently retired and moved into the area and is willing to keep our baby, but before I knew that was a possibility, I talked to people who are from the area. I've only lived here a couple years, so I didn't feel like I had the best knowledge base to go on, as far as which day cares to learn more about, and which ones weren't worth the time.

My boss was a big help. He's lived here the majority of his life, thus knows someone for everything. He recommended a few people for me to talk to and was going to give me a list of people who might be interested in keeping the baby one-on-one..this was all, of course, before we had found someone. I suggest talking to other parents and people from the area. People who know the area and people in it. I'm in a pretty small town, so locals all know each other, so if you're in a bigger city, my advice probably won't be as helpful, but..I tried.

kb2bkk · January 2014

We use an inhome DC for our daughter and found her on a state run website (MA). It had search features, and we were able to look at locations, price, hours, FT/PT all right on the site.

laura3462 · January 2014

I take my son to a wonderful home day care roughly $1500/month for the past 3 years in Chicago. I had to go through a lot of searching and a lot of interviewing to find the right fit before my son was born.

IBackBevo · January 2014

I know some people who went that route (BF and my paralegal) and had great experiences. However, they both knew the people either personally or through a friend-of-a-friend. I am not that lucky.

kalette · January 2014

There are in home daycare's advertising on our local kids buy sell swap FB page pretty often. Maybe look there.

mrstengallonhat1 · January 2014

We are going with an inhome daycare as well. I was able to locate a list of licensed providers on my state's early education and childcare site. I just googled "licensed childcare providers in MA" and the link to the .gov site came right up.

jjh471 · January 2014

I can't really talk... DH and I have a good friend who's wife just opened a family daycare in their home. DH and the husband work together. I would trust these people with my life, they are amazing. They are charging us 40 dollars a day AND are working around DH's schedule. He is a C.O. so his schedule rotates, sometimes he has weekdays off and we won't need childcare. Overall we will pay no more than 160 a week. We are really really lucky. Most places in our area for an infant is 250-350 a week.

cmitch01 · January 2014

Someone I know suggested calling the local Y which offer daycare courses - they might have referrals for you on people who are available in your area. I asked my co workers who they worked with and found the price to be very reasonable compared to daycare centers (under 100/wk) but I'm in south PA. I'm sure metro areas are more.

MamaLlama14 · January 2014

Word of mouth. I found our provider b/c she is only a few blocks from where I teach and exclusively watches children of the teachers at my school. Several work friends had used her and highly recommended her. I'd ask around- local friends who have kids a little older than you who have done it before, and coworkers as well.

Hedgessm · January 2014

In my area there is a program that helps families find at home daycares and does extra monitoring. I found them through careaware which I think is a national organization. Maybe they can point you toward something similar

JessElam · January 2014

I personally went to the TX Dept of Health website. They had an area that listed all licensed daycare providers, inspection reports, etc. I found my lady and she was such a blessing for us. There were only 6 kids, by the time my son left for kinder he was already reading, knew all of his shape, colors, numbers.

Ziegeficker · January 2014

I got a recommendation from my boss. But I also asked anyone who would listen to me and posted about it on Facebook. The more input you get, the better.

We ended up switching to a center soon after starting our in-home daycare anyway...

EmilyGolden1 · January 2014

Thanks for all of the advice, very helpful!

frasey · January 2014

see if there is a local FB group for moms, a B/S/T group, etc. You can ask for recs on there, as there will likely be a zillion, esp for those of you who live in larger cities.

Xath · January 2014

Found ours on the local county website. They have a feature that will sort by location, and it tells you the hours, ages of children they take, languages they speak, etc. You can also click on each entrant to look at their license, their history, and any violations they've accrued (if any). We found an amazing bi-lingual provider with very flexible hours who loves our son like family.

EmilyGolden1 · January 2014

Frasey- what is a bst group?

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