Daycare
Tips & Advice to help you make your decision on Daycare
Daycare is the care of a child that is undertaken during the day by persons other than the child's parents or legal guardians. Business.com is an ideal source of information on daycare options. It is ideal for families where both parents need to work and there is no immediate family to care for the child during the day. Daycare can be provided by either a childminder in their home or by nurseries.
There is a fee charged for every child who needs daycare and this will vary depending on the people providing the care. In the USA, some nurseries are provided by the government and these are subsidized to enable families on lower incomes to be able to afford daycare for their child. All people involved in the care of children need to pass the Child Development Associate credential to ensure that the safety of the children is protected. There is a large amount of complicated legislation relating to the care of children outside of their home. Again, this is to ensure the safety of the child. Often, there is a staff to child ratio that needs to be adhered to and this depends on the age of the child. The younger the children within daycare, the more staff are needed to care for them.
Offering Daycare and Daycare Subsidies
Keep key people with a benefit any working parent will treasure.By Greg Brown The pressures of most jobs are plenty, but adding a child or two to the mix is gasoline on the fire. Even conscientious professionals find themselves choosing between work and life responsibilities too often for comfort.
One truly welcome benefit for those with infants or preschoolers is free daycare or help financing care. For employers, the payoff is:
1) Better productivity
2) Retention of workforce
3) Tax benefits
Here's some ways to get started for even the smallest of businesses:
Figure out how deep you want to go
There are three common flavors to this benefit: Either your company opens a daycare on-site, opens or manages one off-site, or it simply helps employees with the cost.
Try:
What you do has a lot to do with the size of your company and its willingess to commit. Forbes magazine has a good list comparing what big-name employers charge for on-site care (in general, it's half the going rate for private care elsewhere). The Work & Family Connection has a simple, frank frequently-asked questions page for employers considering opening a daycare.
Contract out management to a private label daycare
A number of comanies have moved into the business of setting up, staffing and managing company daycare programs.
Try:
Among them are Knowledge Learning Corp., Children's Choice, La Petite Academy, and Bright Horizons.
Too small? Consider drop-in care
A growing trend among even larger employers is to provide short-term back-up care for when circumstances (like overtime or a sick nanny) demand an employee choose between work and family.
Try:
Caregivers On Call, WorkOptions and LifeCare provide emergency referrals for when normal resources fail.
Consider setting up flexible-spending accounts
You need not get into the actual childcare business or even pay to subsidize it. Allowing employees to sock away pre-tax dollars in an FSA can save them thousands in taxes.
Try:
The U.S. government allows employers to offer flexible-spending acounts with some restrictions, explained in IRS Pub. 969 and at the U.S. government's National Childcare Information Center. In general, you have to be already offering a cafeteria-style benefit plan. Aetna, the insurance company, offers this quickie calculator for figuring if your firm is big enough to play here.
Talk to your tax advisor about breaks
Offering or subsidizing care can mean some immediate tax relief. Not enough to pay for it all, but productivity, retention and a tax break add up to a serious incentive.
Try:
Take a look at these two quick breakdowns on the tax issues, from the National Childcare Information Center and from consultancy KidCentric.
- If your company has less than 50 employees or perhaps just few parents of young children, consider approaching a nearby local daycare and negotiating a discount.
- Be very aware of state and local requirements for childcare operational safety. Demand has brought many new schools into the market, and many struggle to stay certified.
- If you want to see a childcare program near you that works well, contact any major university, hospital or federal agency. Large employers, particuarly of shift workers, often have years of experience at this and can give you valuable insights.
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