Day care salary

Hi, I am Dawn. My son is 13 months now. I am planning to open a day care, not day home. However, I cannot find any info about how much day care workers get paid. I want to provide good quality day care because I know how important it s for our kids. Therefore, I want to provide good salary for those people who work at the center, at the same time I need to have some profit in order to keep the center running. Can anyone let know if you know anything about it? I am in Calgary. I found out the quality of day care centers here are not as good as I think. This is the main reason that I want to open a day care myself.

I did a draft cash flow and find out the day care actually does not earn much. The biggest expenses are salary. Any thoughts?

Thank you very much.

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Originally Posted by Babywood

Hi, I am Dawn. My son is 13 months now. I am planning to open a day care, not day home. However, I cannot find any info about how much day care workers get paid. I want to provide good quality day care because I know how important it s for our kids. Therefore, I want to provide good salary for those people who work at the center, at the same time I need to have some profit in order to keep the center running. Can anyone let know if you know anything about it? I am in Calgary. I found out the quality of day care centers here are not as good as I think. This is the main reason that I want to open a day care myself.

I did a draft cash flow and find out the day care actually does not earn much. The biggest expenses are salary. Any thoughts?

Thank you very much.

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What research have you done? I have done only little and from what I found in order to make a profit you need at least 80 kids. What programs are you planning on running? What food program are you going to run? Will you require a nutrionist or just a cook? If you want people with degrees then you will need to pay more than minimum wage.
What about equipment play gyms etc.there’s tons to consider?

Call around and ask different centers what they pay their staff.

The majority of us on this site are dayhomes so I'm not sure what your looking for.

Good info that Skysue has posted.

Also, I don't know about Calgary, but here in Ontario, you have to be licensed to open up a daycare center. Call the government, and ask what needs to be done. I will tell you right now, you will have no to little life in the next few years, because you'll be so busy trying to make things right, and to stay afloat.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

This is a forum for HOME DAYCARE PROVIDERS, not daycare centers.

Hi Dawn, I am in Ontario as well and there will differences in prices for sure. In order to get started with your business I suggest looking into the Ministry of Social Services and there are specific requirements you need to set in place and follow once in operation. I would not believe those requirements will not be that different from province to province with the exception of Quebec. I suggest to you like any business you investigate location as what building you choose will need certain requirements and you should also ensure not only clients but the longevity of them. There sometimes are assistance plans available to you with wage subsidy for staffing as well as new business. If you have not actually worked in a center, it will be difficult enough for you to promote and ensure quality, let alone not working in a director/supervisor position. From my experiences, the better paid and chosen the staff, the better quality care provided. It is not as simple of a process as it may seem, but once you are operating it becomes a lot easier. Start up is the more difficult part, although there is much to be said about efforts in maintaining a program again for quality. You will most likely need to work with Ministry of Health as well to ensure some things, bi-law, you need to think of insurance, accounting, menu plans/chefs. Good luck with what you decide to do. I am in the same position with thoughts of quality home programs here in Ontario... so many do not have any Early Childhood Educational backgrounds what so ever, and there is an obvious void in the care provided. :)

Dawn are you meaning you are going to open a daycare centre in a separate building or are you meaning a daycare in your home just offering what you believe to be a different style of program than some other "day homes" offer. I ask because the two ideas are very different and come under different regulations. In your home regardless of what kind of program you have or how many staff you have you can still only have a small number of children. If you are looking to open a daycare centre in a building with many staff and many children then first you will need to find a suitable building, make sure it is zoned for a daycare through the bylaw office and then start to make it meet daycare regulations such as number and size of toilets, amount of space, kitchen has to meet certain health standards, etc. None of that applies to a home even if the "teacher" in the home is super qualified it is a different system of childcare.

Actually Alberta does allow a type of small group care out of your home. You can get licensed to have two providers and up to ten kids(not sure if this includes your own or not) I don't have any idea how to go about achieving this but I know that it is a possiblity

Also in Alberta the gov't tops up wages of employees at licensed facilities or dayhome providers that are through an agency based on the level of Education you have. So if you hire someone with level three for example and pay them $15 and hour the gov't will add say $3 and hour on top of that(I don't know what the actually numbers are so those are just examples)

Hi all,

Thank you very much for all your replies.

I am planning to open a day care in a building, not at home.

I know there are a lot of regulations and not easy. That is why I need to get enough info before opening one. The investment is a lot and the biggest expenses is salary after start up.

I was looking for a day care for my 1 year old son. The one meets my expection has a waiting time of 1.5 years. That is the reason I want to open my own, not only for my own son, for also for other kids.

Sorry I did not know this forum is for home day care, not day care center.

Thanks again for all your replies.

Dawn

Dawn rather than trying to start your own centre you might want to put the word out that you are interested in buying or at least taking over the directorship of a current centre. That way a lot of the work would already be done and you could get on with providing the care you want. Another avenue to look into is to approach a church that might be interested in having a preschool in their basement as the rules are a little less strict in terms of size of toilet etc as long as you make adjustments like having stepstools. Our church does a preschool 2, 3, or 5 full days a week.

Hey There Dawn - I have worked in administration in Centre care and helped to open two centres in different cities in Ontario ... IMO the best place to start would be to approach your Provincial licensing agency and ask for their pamphlet 'considering opening a childcare centre what do I need to know' ... it will tell you everything you need to know from creating a business plan with things like setting fees and staff salaries as well as zoning, regulations and so forth.

I am only familiar with the Ontario Day Nursery Act so your regulations could be different ... here in Ontario if you do not have your Early Childhood Education and are wanting to open a centre you would have to HIRE an RECE approved by the Ministry who licenses centres to work as your Director/Supervisor to help you write up all your policies procedures and help with the start up and so forth ... unfortunately there is a reason why 'centre based' childcare is rarer than 'home childcare'... because it is an EXPENSIVE endeavor to under go, takes a lot of time and energy and government hoop jumping to even get OPEN and then once you ARE open there are so many rules to offering it that at the end of the day you end up making the same or less than if you just stayed home and offered home childcare which is just WAY more fulfilling and less stressful to do ;)

Have you considered instead of 'going big' just opening up a smaller day home???