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I have never provided care for children in school so kind of stuck figuring out prices. If a child goes to kindergarten and needs care everyday in the afternoon would that be full time or part time? I have no idea what to tell this family. Thanks. They also have an older child that would only need care after school for an hr and 15 min. Would I just charge by the hour for the older child?
I would consider the kindergarten child a half day so I (personally) would take whatever your daily full day rate is and divide in half.
as for the after school child -- if you are making a special trip out to the school to pick up the child and also providing some sort of snack then I would charge $15.
after school usually ranges anywhere between $10 - $20 in my area depending.
Good luck.
You could also try looking up other provider's ads in your area to see what rates they have and sort of price yourself around that.
I used to offer a half day rate of $25/day and my full time rate is $30 which is low in my city. Since my full day is 9 hours or less I made my half day rate 4.5 hours or less. So I suppose if I lived near a school or offered a 1/2 day program this is what I would charge per day. Full-time is preferencial but when you are getting started and getting your reputation built for references it is important to offer a lot of different services. I don't live near a school and don't have part-time clients any more so I'm very lucky. Wishing you luck!
For the child in kindergarten I was going to offer part time charge but he would be needing care for 5 hrs everyday and Thursday's he doesn't have school so that would be a 9 hr day. So starting to think I'm going to be cutting myself short? Maybe I can give a price in between full time and part time.
When I cared for a half day kindergarten child, they paid full price for his spot. It was only about 3 hours that he was gone, and I was doing transport for him as well.
What I looked at is; it's not as though I can fill that spot while he is gone. If a parent really took issue with paying full price, I would negotiate a rate somewhere in between full and part time.
IMO questions we need to ask our self when setting a part time fee are:
Do I need to be FULL to make this business a viable one for my family? AKA can I afford to take a financial hit of offering part time fees in exchange for having 'quieter' periods during the day - cause it ADDS UP!
If I need to be FULL to be viable can I still offer a part time care as long as I make sure the hours are suitable to fill the 'opposite space' with another child and the fees are higher than 'full time' to offset any openings I may have in offset schedules?
Regardless of fees I know offering this service WILL result in me loosing potential income - am I going to eventually RESENT having agreed to this service as a result and how will I deal with that should it arise? Again it adds up!!!
We are all going to have different answers to those questions and therefore will have created different policies to help address those - you need to do what feels right for YOU and that you are going to be happy with long term ;)
Personally I prefer the consistency and routine of FULL TIME children and a full time income - I am one who can openly admit I WOULD grow to resent that offering a service to someone was costing me lost income specially if they were a 'challenging' client ... however I would not feel right to 'terminate' them if I had AGREED to offer it in the first place - therefore set my policies as such to help me deal with that ;)
My 'half day' options are 4 hours - anything more than 4 hours is considered a full day and you pay for the full day because once you get into more than 4 hours it gets harder to 'share' a space and you are there for snack/lunch and into quiet time and well might as well BE a full day plus just because I am OPEN for a certain amount of time does not mean a half day is half of what I am open ;)
My half day program is offered in increments that I set to ensure that a space could be shared as well as to have minimal impact of the flow of our day - so either 7:30 - 11:30 no lunch or 8:30 -12:30 with lunch .... I use to have the options of 12:30 - 4:30 or a 1:30 - 5:30 but I no longer offer half day afternoons because I find it too hard to have a child enter the program just as 'quiet time' is beginning...it is not fair to them or their peers.. plus I no longer work past 5 .... so if you need any other 'hours' it is a full day because if you do not define your '4 hours' you will get people who want to use care 10-2 and only pay a half day rate and well IME very hard to someone to offset that so definitely loosing income and going to grow to resent that - plus if it is not defined you will have clients who one day it is 10-2 next week it is 10:15 - 2:15 and than it 'grows' from 4 hours to 4.25 hour to almost 5 hours :rolleyes:
I charge only $5 a day less for a 1/2 day program so that I am only loosing out on $25 a week or $1200 a year in 'income' in exchange for offering this service and in exchange I have quieter afternoon with the crew who would be here....that way I do not have to worry about finding an offsetting family unless I really 'need' the $$$$ and well than if I find someone I am 'ahead' of my budget and can save that income for when I have a space sitting empty for a few weeks ;)
As a result of my openly admitting 'deterring' part time policies and fees in my 5 years of years of being open I have only ever had 1 half day family who started out that way and after several months decided that for $35 a week they would just send their child for the full day and she could nap here and have snack which made my life way easier because it gave me the freedom of not being ruled by the clock with regards to making sure everyone was done eating by 12:30 for her to go home or her crying at home time cause she did not want to miss out on afternoon plans and so forth.
IMO needing part time care is a SPECIALTY SERVICE and clients using daycare need to realize that fees should reflect that specialty service and be set in such a manner that makes wanting to 'offer' that service is beneficial to the service provider!