I remember mentioning on the list a few weeks ago that there needs to be daycare available EVERYWHERE that women go. I believe childcare jobs should be performed by trained, qualified personnel. Women are no longer at home all day long being SOLELY professional wives and mothers the way they were in the 19th century….therefore, there will need to be safe, affordable daycare EVERYWHERE that women need to go. I say this because the idea of having day care centers attached to libraries, or to the schools with which they are affiliated, is appealing, but there are still questions of staffing, space, and cost which don’t go away just because we say it’s the responsibility of ”the management of the places where women go.”
Someone does have to pay for these services, regardless of whether you’re talking about a not-for-profit entity or a private business. In the case of the former, it’s the tax-payers, usually, and therefore less obvious and painful, except when the tax bill comes. In the case of the latter, it’s the consumers–including the childless and those who actually can handle their kids, maybe even preferring to have them along rather than in professional day care while they are shopping, who pay. We select the place we do our shopping largely on the basis of price and a place that offered such superfluous day care services would not likely be competitive.
The word “affordable” is a key. What is affordable when you’re living at the limits of your budget anyway? Unless it’s subsidized, there’s no way this day care service is going to be provided by professionals. Drop-in day care is virtually impossible to make into a self-supporting enterprise. I’m puzzled at the idea that children would somehow be better served by spending the whole day going in and out of various professionally-run day care centers than spending time with their parents. Have we really reached the point where our children are so unmanageable that we cannot handle them while shopping in a supermarket, standing in a waiting line at a post office or utility company, etc., so we need to have other people paid to do that for is. If so, the fault lies not in the children or in society, but in ourselves, folks.
You are the one having to pay $100 a week for approximately 2 1/2 hours of childcare a week. BUT, if looked at from the daycare provider’s POV, it’s a whole different kettle of fish. In a lot of areas, there is a limit as to how many children you can be responsible for at one time. The last time I used childcare, it was 6 children per adult. So, if there is one person there, they can only have 6 children at a time. That half hour of daycare after school is most likely actually taking up a whole slot for the entire day. So, from the daycare provider’s POV, you will have to pay for the entire slot for the entire day, even if you don’t use all of tho should have explained better what meant by “subsidized” before/afterschool care—you have to refer entire not-for-profit programs that benefit from subsidized supports and thus do not charge “market childcare jobs rates” (such as programs run by the schools themselves, which are great if the school offers them!). I’m intimately familiar with the need-based child care subsidy programs, but no longer qualify.
The parents determine the quality of the school. All of our teachers have degrees in early childhood education; most of them has a master. We have ratio of 4:1 in the toddler room (age 18 mo to 3) and 6:1 in the preschool room (age 3-5). Other than the professional teachers, we get interns who are in early childhood education majors in colleges. So the ratio is actually somewhere liked 3:1 and 4:1. We pay our teachers very well. During the 3 years we have been with the school, only 2 teachers left in the whole school. One left to go to medical school, the other left to be a better paying kindergarten teacher in a public school. Each class gets new toys on the on going basis. Every few weeks, the parents are organized to fix any broken or need to be painted or need to be replaced things in the classrooms. It is a very tide circle among the families involved in the school. We often spend the weekend with one or more families from the school.
My sister went to Colorado(from Texas) with a family when she was just a little bit younger than that. I think that they just paid her expenses (all of them except spending money). I tend to think that you should pay all her expenses and, if you can afford it, pay her something during the times when she really is babysitting when you go out. She is going to lose out on childcare jobs while she is away from home. It worked out well for my sister. She said that most of the time she was just a member of the family, like an older sister. She and the adults worked together to take care of the kids and had lots of fun. She was only expected to take total care of the kids once in a while – at nap time for example (the adults would go to the pool or shopping) and once in a while in the evening.
On top of that, a recent NPR program described a case where a group of boys is regularly asked to spend a portion of each week taking care of small babies. He announcer also mentioned that the boys now look forward to it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any more details on this, but it certainly sounds good. Indeed, very good! Those boys can now go out and get babysitting jobs or childcare jobs, moving in on the girls who monopolize it, and preparing themselves to be involved fathers.
I had my son 10 weeks ago today, and was supposed to return to work full-time 3 days ago. As the time approached, however, I just couldn’t do it. I was a third grade teacher this past year, but I worked in child care most of the last 9 years before that, so I thought I could go back to that field and take my baby with me, but none of the centers I applied at were willing to agree to that, so here I am at home. I had the experience of caring for children 6 weeks through 16 years in different environments, and I saw many “DI” families where the kid was a minor consideration.
The UK law provides a lot of protection for parents. People working with children are not allowed to examine children physically, or to take them to the doctor without parental consent. If a child comes into a setting with bruising, the first action of the nursery worker should be to talk to the parents about it. This is done partly to protect the worker – it has been known for parents to accuse workers of bruising their child, when the bruise was an old one acquired elsewhere. It is also done out of concern and interest in the child, and should not be threatening to the parent.
Childcare jobs should provide a safe, nurturing and educational environment for all children in the classroom. This individual will implement the Brigance Development Screening Tool and the Desired Results Developmental Profile Plus (DRDP+) and use the information gathered from these instruments to develop an Individualized Learning Plan (ILP). All assessments are conducted within 45 days of child enrollment. Based on these assessment tools, teachers maintain monthly anecdotal notes that highlight children’s progress. The DRDP+ is administered three times per year (fall, winter and spring), so as to collect outcome data on children’s progress.
Well, why become a parent, if you’re not intending on parenting? And what makes you think that it requires a master’s degree in child psychology to become good parents? In pretty much any other endeavor in life, if you do something part-time, for enjoyment, while having some other “real” job, it’s called a hobby. Do you consider your kids your hobby?
