Entrepreneurship in Child Care Services

Entrepreneurship in Childcare Services 4 (2+2)

Lesson 5 : Child Development Center: Need and Importance

Importance of assessment

1. To determine the number of families and children that will use a child care service.
2. Type of service desired by people who will use it.

Things needed in assessment?
To determine what is the need we want to know.

1. Number of families and children:
   1. How many families are interested to use the services?
   2. Number of eligible children from each family?

   Some planners overestimate the number of families who need child care and fail to consider how many of those families will use or pay for center based care if it is provided.

2. Socio-economic level of families:
   Many families may be interested in child care services but are unable to pay enough to cover the cost of services they choose or need. Hence planners or operators must find outside funding if at all they have to provide quality day care to the children of that community.
   10% ---total income
   25% ---low income.


3. Ages of children to be served:
   The age of participants can affect all programme planning considerations and can make a considerable difference in cost of delivering the service.
   
   • Determine the number of families who expect to have infants or toddlers participate in the group care programme outside home.
   • When doing need assessment, enquiry should be done not only about 3 and 4 year olds who may need care, but also about older children and those under age three.


4. Type of services the families prefer:
   • It includes whether families prefer full day or half day child care programme.
   • Working families prefer full day care and they often need it for children ranging in age from birth through school age.
   • Families with toddlers may prefer a half-day programme.


5. How do we find out about need?
   • Data collected can be through census figures, date of births from the health department, etc.
   • Data collected can be through formal and informal methods: use of questionnaires, use of telephonic surveys, small group meetings etc.

   The information collected should include:

   • number of adults in the household
   • number of adults employed
   • number and age of all children in the household
   • number of children currently cared for outside the home.
   • number and ages of children with special needs
   • estimate of family income
   • estimate of how much is or could be spent on child care
   • days and hours of child care is needed
   • preferred location of child care
   • will the family use the proposed child care centre when it becomes available.


6. Program philosophy: The characteristics of the program are based on the philosophy of the programme. Programme philosophy guides director’s decision about hiring new staff selecting appropriate staff training, because they want to ensure that all staff are prepared to implement a programme that is consistent with the adopted philosophy. The curriculum and teaching strategies are also based on programme philosophy. Program philosophy deals with who decides about the philosophy and what is the basis for deciding what the philosophy should be?