Sick days...

[ebhappydc]

I wish I could charge for sick days and even some personal days/holidays. But pickings are too slim in my area, so I can't. Luckily, I'm rarely ill and don't have many appointments now my kids are grown. Wouldn't taking all this paid time off make centers more attractive to clients? They are available every day to children are they not regardless of employee health and appointments etc?
I wouldn't want to give a family any more reason to go to center. I do of course charge when their child doesn't attend. ?

[Peacefulbird]

I wish I could charge for sick days and even some personal days/holidays. But pickings are too slim in my area, so I can't. Luckily, I'm rarely ill and don't have many appointments now my kids are grown. Wouldn't taking all this paid time off make centers more attractive to clients? They are available every day to children are they not regardless of employee health and appointments etc?
I wouldn't want to give a family any more reason to go to center. I do of course charge when their child doesn't attend. ?

Absolutely.

I'm not sure where you are but in Ontario we are going through so many changes and our work as private or independent homedaycares have been scrutinized, they're doing everything possible to bring it up to the media and show how bad and unreliable are the "independent or private homedaycares" yet they do not show publicly, incidents that also happens in the licensed sector.

We, who make our living through this work and support our families, we keep defending ourselves, we keep showing that offering services in our homes doesn't mean that we lack of proffesionalism.

If we keep advocating for our proffesionalism we must assume that role and act responsible as one.

Yes, we can go and work on centres (some offer good benefits some don't but in general the pay is low, having access to sick days or vacations etc is also relative) parents go to centres because they've been sold on the idea that a centre is better (honestly far from the truth, unless you visit centres operated directly by the government non-for profit and their educators have generous benefit packages and belong to an unionized system ).

Unfortunately thanks to those selfish, unprofessional, and people who don't care for the rest of us or families or children, we have all been affected (they didn't have any social responsibility ).

Now, it is up to us to keep cleaning our image and act as competent professionals in the field. We are against a huge mountain I found this some time ago. An agency uses this to attract and convince parents:

"while many unlicensed or informal home daycare Providers do a very good job, the absence of regulatory safeguards or of a back-up Provider should the home child care provider fall I'll or be otherwise unavailable are two of the major reasons many parents prefer Licensed child care"- ADCO

Now you judge it and tell me what do you thing about this?

It is upsetting but that's one of the reason I do act with professionalism just so parents are aware that my caring services are competent and still keep it in an environment that nurtures children "Home".