Child Care Centre vS Home Daycare: How To Choose

Table of Content

• Describing Configurations of Non-Parental Child Care
• The Pros and Cons Of Daycare Centers vs Home Based Child Care
• What Is the Difference Between Center-Based Daycare and Home-Based Care?
• Home-based vs. center-based child care
• Study Design and Sample Selection
• Center-Based Daycare
• How can you prepare yourself for the transition to center-based child care?

Education is important because it teaches child care providers how to help children learn and grow. Providers learn how to plan the day, serve nutritious foods, interact with children effectively, and offer fun activities that children will like. All of these skills can help them provide more sensitive, nurturing care for children.

Also, don’t be shy about asking parents in your community — at the playground or on Facebook. Most parents know how challenging it is to find the right child care option for your family—and will be happy to help. Structure – daycare centers have structured schedules and provide a more school-like environment and feeling without the pressure of being graded or assessed. This can be especially beneficial for children to become used to routine and structure before entering kindergarten.

Describing Configurations of Non-Parental Child Care

Personally, I found comfort in knowing my baby was with a small group of children in someone’s home. I was fortunate enough to find a wonderful childcare provider who developed a tight bond with my girls. The takeaway, the researchers suggest, is the need for more research on improving access to center-based programs, especially for low-income families, and new efforts to improve the overall quality of early education.

Safety– It’s up to you to verify if the setting is safe for your child if you place him or her in an unlicensed home daycare. Staff Turnover – At a centre, your child will have 3 to 4 different caregivers in his/her classroom, depending upon enrollment. Safety– Daycare centres are required to follow provincial daycare regulations, such as passing regular health inspections, hiring staff with CPR & First Aid training and obtaining comprehensive insurance.

The Pros and Cons Of Daycare Centers vs Home Based Child Care

The purpose of a daycare center is to provide parents with a place to leave their child without worry as they will be around people who are trained in taking care of children and providing for their needs. Parents who report better child care options in their community will be more likely to combine center- and home-based child care than to use care of one type exclusively. Parents who endorse school readiness as a priority when choosing care will be more likely to combine center care with home-based child care than those who use home-based child care exclusively or those that use no non-parental child care. You have a lot of factors to consider when deciding on the best type of child care for your family.

There were also some salient patterns among families who exclusively used one kind of care. Exclusive center care was common among these 4-year olds, the status of fully half the sample (51%). Not surprisingly, when families used only a center, the arrangement was more often part-time among non-employed mothers and full-time among employed mothers.

What Is the Difference Between Center-Based Daycare and Home-Based Care?

If you work odd hours, a home-based daycare might be able to accommodate your needs. However, there might be fewer workers to keep the center staffed if someone gets sick. Your child’s care is ultimately up to you, so trust your gut when making decisions about what’s best for your family. Exposure to Disease – since there are more children in a daycare center, there is a higher probability that children can get sick.

Although we adjusted for demographic covariates and, when predicting child outcomes, for maternal priorities for care, perceptions of care options, and earlier child development, we cannot infer causality from the associations. It is possible that some mothers may revise their care priorities based on the types of care that they use, for example, coming to endorse school readiness because of their experiences in a center, or coming to rate their local care options as good because they like a particular provider that they used. Our results also suggest that, on the one hand, combining care arrangements may sometimes be a solution to practical constraints but also that, on the other hand, combining care types may sometimes be inhibited by market constraints. We draw the first conclusion because we found some support that mothers who reported practical concerns were more likely to combine a center with home-based child care than to use a center exclusively. We expect that the mothers who combine care types may like the access to flexibility and sick care offered by their home-based provider, as well as the lower cost and closer proximity of the portion of their care that is home-based.

Home-based vs. center-based child care

We used predicted means to facilitate interpretation of the results (Long, 1997; Long & Freese, 2005). We first conducted overall F-tests of any association between the configurations of non-parental child care and child outcomes and then used Stata’s lincom command to recover contrasts among each pair of care configurations. We used Stata’s margins command to calculate predicted values , indicating each care configuration, one at a time, and holding maternal priorities/perceptions, demographic covariates and lagged child outcomes constant at their means.

You need to do your own diligence to ensure the job or caregiver you choose is appropriate for your needs and complies with applicable laws. Here is a summary table of the main features of licensed versus unlicensed home daycare. Celeste has dedicated her decade-long career to reporting and reviews that help people make well-informed decisions. She oversees editorial strategy and production for SafeWise, with a goal to help everyone find the information they need to make their homes and lives safer. Prior to SafeWise, she worked as an editor and reporter for KSL and Deseret News.

Even with good hygiene and hand washing procedure, young children are more likely to practice poor cough etiquette or touch their mouths, nose and eyes. NICHD ECCRN. Characteristics and quality of child care for toddlers and preschoolers. About one-fifth of 4-year-olds in a national sample attended both home- and center-based non-parental child care. Less Structure– The quality of the educational curriculum depends upon the desire and abilities of the homecare provider.

Unlike home-based care, there will rarely be a day when parents have to rearrange their schedules or miss a day of work in order to compensate. Just under one-fifth of the study’s 4-year olds were cared for by their parents exclusively (19%). This fraction was higher for families in which the mother was not employed, but even within these families, nearly two-thirds of the 4-year olds attended some type of regular, non-parental child care arrangement.

Center-Based Daycare

Many have smaller caregiver-to-child ratios, too, allowing the staff to provide more the individualized care parents of babies sometimes prefer. A good daycare/preschool will help get your child used to playing with lots of other children. Plus, kids learn the routines of a daycare center, so they are ready for kindergarten.

Sampson O. Child care confusion – national study and ensuing media coverage leave parents with more questions than answers. Burchinal M, Howes C, Kontos S. Structural predictors of child care quality in child care homes. Private daycare centres will typically charge more to cover things like rent, staff salaries, insurance, utilities and food.

These are a great choice for parents who have jobs with fixed hours or kids who benefit from structured schedules. They also provide socialization, and their teachers often have a degree in education, so kids transition easily from here into school. Child care centers are more likely to have an educationally enriched and age-appropriate curriculum that encourages literacy, language development, and social/emotional development. Many centers offer opportunities like cooking, dance, music, or foreign language classes. Plus, they are more likely to use age-appropriate technology to assist learning, which is not as common in home-based care. Curriculum – daycare centers are more likely to provide a curriculum which is age-appropriate and educationally enriched to develop literacy, language, social and emotional development.