Childcare Management Business people love to create new opportunities, ideas, and products to make a profit. When America’s businesses added women to their workforce and with the rise of single-parent households, the need for childcare arose, which is a wonderful business opportunity for those people who see the need for affordable quality childcare and are able to envision innovative ways to provide this service. The adequacy or lack of quality childcare affects society as well as the businesses employing those who use childcare services. I picked the topic of childcare management because in the future I want to be an entrepreneur in the childcare industry. I want to research the childcare field as much as possible to learn about the unique opportunities and challenges I will face as a new business owner in the childcare industry.
The business of childcare is a national problem. There are several reasons for the lack of good, affordable childcare in most communities. The lack of childcare affects the success or failure of businesses and their employees with children younger than school age. Some workplaces offer childcare but at such a price or with such bad service that the workers don’t want to leave their children.
Some parents are forced, due to the lack of a suitable childcare facility, to leave their children unattended. Others make the decision to quit the workforce to care for their children. Another reason for the need of good of childcare facilities is the lack of adequate teachers and employee turnover in the childcare industry. This is due to lower pay, usually minimum wage, and the challenges of keeping the worker / child ratio at or greater than the law requires with the business remaining profitable.
Many of the workers leave the industry in order to find better paying or less stressful jobs. Regardless of the reasons childcare is needed. It is needed. We need the support of the government, corporate America, and the children’s families to produce positive results for the communities. With the advancement of both single and second income parents into the workplace, there is a growing need for quality childcare. This could be seen as not just nine to five childcare but, childcare that could be needed day or night since corporate America runs twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Some parents would rather work in their chosen careers and enroll their children in daycare rather than lose the income and care for the children themselves. Some realize that going back to school or collage is necessary if they want to better their standard of living. Many homemakers feel it is necessary for their children to have social interaction that may not occur outside of the childcare center. Also, some of those parents need help with the education that childcare centers may offer, such as computer skills and training of the basics of education, since they may not have access to a computer out side of the childcare center or feel they lack the confidence / ability to properly prepare their children for school. For these parents, having a good childcare facility is a must.
In the United Kingdom employers are banding together to lobby their government to help provide childcare at a lower or even free cost. They realized the loss of valuable trained workers every time an employee has a child and drops out of the work force due to a lack of adequate childcare. This one thing causes a loss if income to the companies due to retraining cost to replace these experienced workers. This is not only limited to the United Kingdom but also occurs as a problem in the United States as well as around the world Understanding from working in the childcare industry, that a lot of well-trained workers are lost due to a belief that childcare workers should not be paid a living wage or that they are not teachers but over rated babysitters.
This causes many a good worker to look elsewhere for employment. You do need to do background checks for all the workers as this will weed out those that should not be allowed in any form to work around children. We are after all told by Jesus that anyone who would harm a child that it would be better to tie a mill stone around there neck and drop them overboard at sea We need to work with our local, counties, and federal governments to insure no child get left behind. Unfortunately this has occurred in our countries past and to some extent can still occur today. A families income level or should we say lack of income should not stop a child from being able to learn. Studies have shown that children as young as twelve months can learn, and as young as six months can recognize there names.
We need to insure that workers receive a decent livable wage. This can be found in scriptures where you are instructed not to rob a worker or force them to steal due to a lack of necessities. We need to use an honest scale. The United States Marine Corps is using a twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week approach of helping their marines that are called out on active duty. If childcare or special needs childcare is needed to support the troops, there is a childcare home available.
This provides the support necessary for those troops who are called out on emergency duties at odd hours of the night, or for those who have no other choice but to resign their positions, due to a lack of available childcare. It would be better if we patterned our childcare centers after that being used by the United States Marine’s, they are expanding there wonderful working formula into other countries as well. Should we not try to incorporate this working model into our own community’s childcare centers? In Moss Point, MS there is a professional woman who started a childcare center due to a lack of adequate caregivers in her area she is now one of the fastest growing childcare providers in Mississippi. She has thirty computer terminals available to teach children the fundamentals and they even learn phonics and many are reading by age five. She also gives back to her community by giving grants to underprivileged families. We need to have our companies in each communities to band together with federal government as well as local governments to provide adequate childcare this would insure an adequate supply of future workers as they would be well educated for we would be investing in our own futures we see on the news every day what can happen when we don’t invest in children and they are forced to wander the streets getting into trouble In the bible it says to raise up a child in the ways it should go and when its old it will not depart from it, so if we start training these children and teaching them to read and to solve there problems.
We could teach the adults, educate the lower income family heads; sending them to school or to collage instead of a burden on society they would then be productive adults. Would that not be an honorable goal? We have to see to the needs of the widows and orphans if we are to do Gods will. Some may not see childcare as a means of doing God’s Will, but even Jesus asked for the children to be brought to him. Therefore we know children are important to him and how we treat them will be reflected back on us.