Ryan Gwaltney, vice president of sales for Procare Solutions, remembers the days before apps, back when many child care centers sent home daily sheets to inform parents about what happened during their child’s day.
Today, parents want more communication. And they want that communication in real time that they can access through their phones.
Millennials in particular are seeking child care centers that use an app to give them push notifications and updates on what their children are doing, all day long. They want to know exactly what their little ones are learning and doing, and they want to know immediately.
“We’ve seen a large emphasis put on the ability to communicate with parents,” Ryan said.
Ryan detailed in a webinar how Procare’s Parent Engagement app can help centers give parents the communication they crave. The app allows child care centers to optimize parent communications and build lasting relationships with the families they serve.
The app enables you to focus on building your child care community and instilling trust among your parents by involving them in their children’s day-to-day activities. You can share milestones in real time to engage parents in their children’s ongoing development and help parents reinforce what is taught in the classroom by providing insight into their children’s curriculum and learning objectives.
The app serves parents and helps child care centers run more efficiently. Ryan pointed out the construct and logic of the Parent Engagement system by explaining that everything your teachers and parents are doing is fed back to center administrators.
“You will see real-time information,” he said. And that information helps you measure many things, including how effective teachers are at communicating with parents.
What the App Can Do
Procare’s Parent Engagement app supports learning outcomes by allowing centers to assess and report on developmental milestones, to record and share activities with parents, to connect those activities to state and Montessori standards and to share curriculum and lesson plans.
It promotes community safety by giving centers the ability to track attendance and room movement, and ensure teacher-to-student ratio adherence and reporting. The app also offers contactless check-in and check-out with authorized drop-off and pick-up information accessible from any device – plus, it creates incident and activity reports.
Ryan showed a test screen to webinar participants that displayed the name and picture of each child in a center. A green dot showed whether a child was checked in, and Ryan explained how administrative staff can take a broader view to see every child signed into the school. The app also allows you to view signed-out kids, and an icon gives you the ability to view in real time the ratios throughout your building.
The Parent Engagement app helps build trust and loyalty, Ryan said. The app allows for easy two-way communication so photos and videos can be shared in real time. And centers can create and share newsletters and an event calendar.
The calendar can show parents what is happening today and gives you the ability to share upcoming events with parents.
And as more child care center owners and directors spend more time away from their desks, the app gives them added flexibility to update the calendars, as well as other functions, from wherever they are.
Ryan said the app is a great tool for administrative staff to send messages to team members through the building, without being tied to their offices.
“We want to give the staff at your school really easy access to everything they need to do as they’re moving through the school,” Ryan said. The Parent Engagement app puts the tools in their hands to make their jobs more digital.
Click here if you’d like to hear Ryan’s entire webinar.
Get Procare to Help You Stay Engaged with Parents
Procare has been in business for more than 30 years and has established deep roots in the child care industry. Through the decades, Procare’s focus has always been on delivering software tools to help anyone in the early education space.
Request a demo and talk with one of our friendly Procare experts to get a tailored parent engagement solution for the unique needs of your business.
And mark your calendars for more Procare webinars! At 1 p.m. ET on July 14, join us for a webinar hosted by Monique Reynolds, director of ECE business support services at Quality Care for Children. She’ll be discussing ways to automate to tackle your biggest child care business challenges.
And at 1 p.m ET on Aug. 18, join us for a webinar hosted by Tony D’Agostino, chief executive officer and founder of Inspire Care 360, to learn about how to stop the revolving door of ECE staff turnover.
Register today for the free webinars.
