24 Hour Care Daycare for Shift Workers
Does Providing Overnight Childcare Include Giving Kids a Bath?
Nov 16, 2009 Jennifer Harshman
Parents who work third shift and don’t have someone at home to watch their children need overnight daycare. Providing overnight care for children whose parents work the night shift could be an easy option for business owners who want to make more money. It can be the easiest way to increase providers’ income without increasing their workloads.
What Does Overnight Daycare Look Like? How Does Sleepover Care Work?
Parents who work third shift spend the afternoon and evening with their children, then drop off their children for care at night before going to work. The children go to bed and sleep overnight in the daycare provider’s home. Children might leave the daycare provider’s home in the morning, or they may stay until afternoon.
For those who leave in the morning, the parents may arrive after finishing the shift to pick up the children, or they may send a family member to pick up the children. For those who stay at the provider’s for part of the day, the parents leave the children with the daycare provider so they can get some sleep, then pick up the children in the afternoon.
The provider may see older children off to school in the mornings. The parents then would be responsible for them after school.
Charging for Childcare – Rates and Fees for Overnight Daycare
Pay for overnight care may be less than that of daytime care, because less work is involved. Rates vary among providers, but overnight care commonly runs about half the cost of daytime care. The rates are lower because overnight care is (ostensibly) easier on the provider. Children in overnight care are (or should be) sleeping while in the provider’s care, and don’t need things like meals or close supervision.
A parent who needs both overnight care and daytime care (such as a third-shift worker whose child is not yet in school) would generate more income for a provider than a single-shift client would. A wise provider would want parents like that as clients.
Easy Way to Make Extra Money - Babysit While Sleeping
Caring for a child overnight and continuing to care for the child during some of the daytime hours would allow the provider to charge for the overnight hours (at approximately half of the day rate), and also to charge for the daytime slot. The parent would probably want to spend some time with his or her child after getting some sleep, so would pick up the child partway through the day. The provider would charge for the day’s slot, and so would get paid for the full day.
This is a way to increase income while doing less work. Daycare owners could make 150% of what they’d make from a child who comes just during the normal daytime hours by having a client who stays overnight and then through part of the day.
Give Childcare Discount Because Kids are Sleeping? A Choice for Daycare Providers
Some providers would not want to reduce the parent’s childcare bill just because the child is not present for part of the day. They would take the viewpoint that the parent is paying a set price for the slot, for the ability to bring their child, not for the number of hours the child is present. Incidentally, this is the way that daycare centers and the majority of individual providers operate.
Some providers would want to give a discount, preferring to charge a fee negotiated for the hours the child is present. They might take the view that they get off work early – at 3 in the afternoon when the night-shift children go home. Each childcare provider will have to decide which to do.
Providing care when others don't can be an excellent choice for in-home daycare owners. Everyone involved can benefit: parents who need childcare at those times, children who need a safe place to be, and providers who need increased income.
Nighttime Daycare Client comes in pajamas
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