Comparison: Homecare Versus In Home Daycare

Daycare Center
Versus
In Home Daycare
Written By: Christine Totten
English Composition 121
July 2, 2011

Many people have their own theory on childcare and that it can depend on the needs of the child. However there are several other factors that need to be considered when choosing to send your child and/or children to either a public or private daycare versus an in home daycare. First there is the cost. The tuition at a daycare center is typically higher than the cost of an in home daycare. Another factor to consider is the type of care that you want and/or need your child to receive. There are several different things to consider in this aspect; social skills that need to be developed, schedules that your child will need to
follow, attention to paid directly to your child, the idea of younger children being able to interact with older children. So many factors go into the type of care that you want and/or need for your child. Making the decision to put your child/children into daycare is a major decision in itself, to have to choose between a daycare center and an in home daycare makes the decision even harder.
The tuition cost of a daycare center can be pretty steep especially when you are putting more than one child into the equation. I currently work at a daycare in the suburbs of Chicago and the tuition for an infant in 2011 is $274 a week, and that rate does not go down until the child turns two years of age. (With the center that I work at, the parents only provide the diapers, the formula and/or breast milk and a blanket for the crib the center will provide everything else.) The items needed to be brought will usually be the same with most centers (at least in Illinois) Most centers within the Chicago land suburbs are typically right within that price range maybe a $20 to $30 difference but that is about it. Now you can also consider a corporate run daycare center like a Bright Horizons, Kindercare, Goddard or a La Petite you can add on about a $100 to the $274 tuition cost that we started with. There is also usually a discount when you enroll more than one child. The discount can range from 10% to 20% depending on the daycare center. Now when you consider the cost of an in home daycare, you are looking at spending about $120 to $150 a week for an infant. You are asked to provide the same
items as the daycare centers and then some others depending on the daycare. Now some items to consider when weighing to see what is more cost effective you have to look at what you are really paying for. With a daycare center you are going to have certified and accredited teachers and you will have one lead teacher and one assistant teacher in every room. Whereas at an in home daycare the teachers may or may not have those same qualifications as the daycare center did. There are also set times of operation at both centers, however things can come up with an in home daycare that won’t ever be an issue at a daycare center. For instance a teacher wanting to take a vacation, at a daycare center there will be another teacher in the room for that week while the lead teacher is gone, but you can most definitely still bring your child to the center. Whereas at an in home daycare you will have to that week because there will be no one to care for child/children with the person in charge gone for the week. These are two major factors to consider when making the decision between a daycare center and an in home daycare, tuition cost and center flexibility.
Another topic of contention would have to the type of care that you want and or need your child to receive.
There are several objectives to think about with this topic. There are the social skills that you want your child to develop, because obviously if your child is at an in home daycare with only a few other children they are less likely to develop the same social skills. You also need to consider the schedule that you want your child and or children to follow, especially if one of your children has special needs. At a daycare center they will create a schedule for your child that is conducive to the other children in the class as well as the age group of the class. They might make a few changes based on the children that they have in the class at any given time, of for instance that schedule did not work for the majority of the class. In the case that you have an infant most daycare centers will allow the parents to make the schedules for the babies, until they are around 12 – 14 months of age. However in the end the schedule is generally designed to work for the class as a whole versus each individual child. On the other hand in an in home daycare there are fewer children and therefore fewer teachers. There are also several age groups mixed into one or maybe two groups. With that being said individual schedules are easier to follow. This will usually help more when you have a child with a special needs, that needs a little more care than the typical child.
With fewer children and fewer teachers it allows more individual time to be spent with each child. These are two more major decision factors to consider when you are deciding who will care for your children.
When there are several different theories on how and who to have care for your children, there are so many options to consider. Tuition rates and the type of care that your children need and or what you want them to have are huge decisions to have to make. Being a parent nowadays is much different than it used to be so there are so many more tough decisions to make and when children are involved it makes it all the tougher.