Keeping up with the everyday administrative and monitoring needs in a daycare and childcare center is a time-consuming and often inefficient process.
But, using a child care subsidy attendance system could make all the difference.
With around 4.8 million children attending a paid childcare service in the US, it's safe to say that demand is high. Childcare services include preschool programs, childcare centers, and school-age programs.
Interestingly, of these children, 1.40 million children receive childcare subsidies. But monitoring all these children, especially those receiving subsidies, can take up lots of time better spent on the children themselves.
So, what is a child care subsidy system? What can it do? And how can a childcare center benefit from one?
We'll answer these questions in this article. So, let’s dive straight in.
What Is a Child Care Subsidy Attendance System?
The child care subsidy system is an easy-to-use digital platform designed to help families and childcare providers.
The software aims to help manage childcare centers more efficiently by automating administrative tasks.
The system can record which children receive subsidies and track their attendance. If the government, parents, or childcare providers need this information, it's easily accessible.
This system has many other benefits, such as:
- Streamlining communications with parents
- Enrollment monitoring
- Billing
- Reports
- Schedules
- Staff management
Adding to this, all these features are available from the convenience of one dashboard.
Let’s break down some of the benefits a little more.
Saves Time
According to Early Learning Ventures, they’ve helped their users save 551 hours per year in time. This isn’t surprising when you consider how the system automates many tedious, repetitive administrative tasks.
With less time spent on administrative tasks, there's more time available to spend with the children and plan activities to enrich their learning and development.
Track Children’s Growth
This system allows daycare workers to easily document each child’s growth and development. The software will enable you to take photos, record videos, and make notes about a child’s progress at the moment.
This will allow for more accurate, real-time observations and monitoring.
This software should also safely share any:
- Notes
- Photos
- Videos
...with parents or caregivers. They can also track their child’s growth and progression in real-time.
Billing and Payments
Coordinating payments and billing is one of the most frustrating aspects for childcare providers and parents.
This could be because someone else has come to collect the child and has got payment ready, or the parent could forget to bring payment with them.
Not only this, but recording, tracking, collecting, and reminding parents of payments due are all headaches childcare providers are familiar with. All these issues can be taken care of by a childcare
Routine Tasks
An efficient childcare management system can help daycare providers manage essential and everyday tasks. This includes recording infant feeding or diaper checks.
Or it could be administrative tasks such as getting signatures, filing out daily report forms, and logging incident reports.
Attendance
Monitoring the attendance of both staff and children is an essential part of any childcare service.
As stated above, with so many children at childcare services, daycare providers must track the attendance of those who work for them and the children enrolled.
Why Is a Childcare Attendance Verification System Important?
In 2018-2019, the Department of Workforce Services (DWS) Internal Audit Division conducted an audit of childcare providers that received a significant amount of funds from the CCDF.
This stands for (Child Care and Development Fund) to provide care for children covered by CCDF subsidies.
The audit revealed several things:
- Childcare providers were resistant to sharing attendance records to DWS for children covered by subsidies
- Records were not accurate
- Childcare providers did not have a consistent system for tracking attendance
- Some children for whom providers claimed payment did not attend the program.
As a result of these findings, it was determined that a child care automated attendance system would improve attendance and ensure DWS is paying appropriately.
Benefits of a Childcare Subsidy Attendance System
Three of the most notable benefits of using such a system include:
- The more efficient running of your day-to-business
- Enhanced security
- Access to lots of handy features
Let's take a look at each in turn:
Running Your Day-to-Day Business
A sound childcare management system should help relieve the stress of many everyday business elements. It should also help you keep to the above conditions implemented by the DWS and make it a lot easier.
The system should:
Allow your business to keep track and maintain daily time and attendance through signing in and signing out of children whose payments are subsidized through CCDF.
A good system should also provide the DWS with immediate, electronic access to attendance records while providing security measures to protect the privacy of those on the attendance tracking system.
It should also help you keep tabs on your staff’s daily activities, even when you’re not physically there. Provide internal controls to reduce and detect any fraudulent attendance record entries.
Lastly, you should be able to utilize the interface eligibility and payment system to stop payment for the following month when a child hasn't attended for at least eight hours by a date determined by the DWS.
Security
As mentioned above, a childcare subsidy attendance system should provide many security features.
For example, it should help prevent fraudulent activity, provide transparency to the DWS, and provide security when sharing personal information.
A childcare attendance system keeps track of where the children are. It makes sure that the child arrives (attends) when they are meant to and is an easy system for parents to manage if they need to log an absence.
Each child’s file has a list of verified pick-up people to make sure a child doesn’t go home with someone they’re not supposed to go home with.
In addition, if a child is being picked up from childcare earlier than usual, daycare providers can check the attendance software to ensure the person picking them up is authorized to do so.
The system can provide parents with peace of mind that their child’s whereabouts are always known, and they know when and with whom the child leaves the building.
Many Features
A good childcare attendance system, such as the one provided by Early Learning Ventures, has many valuable features that can benefit a daycare center and its responsibilities.
These include:
- System support and maintenance: for example, if the internet goes down, a suitable solution will be reached for childcare providers and parents.
- Internal controls and integrity
- Training and support
- Data collection
- Data ownership and management
- Reporting
So, be sure to double-check that any system you're considering boasts the above functionality.
A Childcare Subsidy Attendance System that Works for You
You must find the right childcare attendance system that works for your childcare facility.
Looking at what you need to improve on and areas where you could save time is essential to know what you want the system to provide for you.
Early Learning Ventures provides an attendance system that helps you benefit from all the features mentioned above and helps to ensure you keep following DWS requirements.
Schedule a demo to try out our Child Care Subsidy Attendance System.Are you looking for more child care management information? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Child Care Management.
Our child care management system makes running your child care program simple and efficient. Get back to what's most important. You shouldn't have to spend more time on the administrative tasks than you do with children and staff.
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Or schedule a demo with us to learn more about how our child care management system, Alliance Core, can streamline your administrative processes.
Do you run an early childhood association made up of child care providers? If so, check out our Ultimate Guide to Shared Service Alliance.
Header image courtesy of Jumpstory.
