Drop in?

Does anyone here do drop in care? How do you handle it?

I have a family here now who has been for 4 months. Two great kids, easy and considerate parents. Mom's employment has changed a bit, she's a teacher and wasn't able to find part-time like she wanted, so she plans on subbing next year.

She would like to keep them here, as would I, but I'm also not a big risk taker. She intends to do 2-3 days a week, which would work out to be equal to what I'm making now (as I plan on taking another little guy in October). It would be nice to have some easy days in the mix, since the new one will be a baby... but on the other hand, thats 2 spots that would be taken up for potentially no income, depending on the week.

I was thinking that I would tell them that they need to send them here a minimum of 1 day/week (or at least pay me for it), just to cover myself a bit.

Any thoughts? Advice?


By the way, thanks so much everyone! There's alway so much help and good advice on here. I'm so glad I found this forum, it's made the isolation so much easier to handle!

To hold a space I would charge them a minimum of three days a week so you know how much money you are going to earn. If mom then works more than three days she would add a daily amount accordingly.

The other option since there are two children would be to charge one full time fee so getting paid for 5 days per week and then if more days are used (remember to count two days for each day they come ie one day per child to get your total). Again it allows you to know the minimum amount of money you will earn.

For me, I have 3 full timers who are here 5 days week. I also have a dcg who is here 3 days a week which are flexible as mom works from home. For my remaining spot I use it for drop ins, part timers. I have one dcb who comes Wed only and 3 other dcp that work on call so its always a last minute thing. I have said no sometimes as I always want to keep it at my "5".
I also charge more for these on call families by $5 per day.

My minimum is 3 days a week and the daily fee is higher

i have a drop in family i have upped my rates so that after this family leaves it is no longer so appealing. i also budget based on how many days a week he is here for and look at that money as my mad money. it is doable you just have to decide how you are going to manage it.

Thanks ladies! I think I've found a couple of solutions that can work out for us. I'll offer them to the parents and see what they decide.

My minimum is 3 days/week and I have to know the dates in advance to mark my calendar. How on earth can you plan your weeks if you offer dropin? Well, it wouldn't work for me anyway because we only stay on the premises one day a week sometimes. I don't know how you would be able to plan meals, crafts, field trips if you never knew how many children were coming every day.

You deserve to make a living from your space so why would you allow a person to occupy a space that they aren't using? It isn't fair to you. Think about it before you agree to it.

Well there's a couple of things that are a bit specific to my situation - I'm only open 4 days a week, so I have a few less clients to choose from than a full-time caregiver would.
I also can have up to 6 kids, but I've limited myself to 5 (I've only been doing this a few months and think I'll burn out if I dive in all fast a furious), so if I had the two of them 2 or more days a week, that would do money-wise, plus it would be nice to break up the days with part-time kids.
I'd get a commitment of number of days a week, just not the actual days. We don't do any outings that couldn't be finalized the morning of, or rescheduled.

At any rate, the parents weren't able to commit to any time, so it's not going to go through. Blessing in disguise perhaps :)!