When you communicate proactively with families about activities, events and schedules, parents see that your child care center is organized, professional and reliable!
When early childhood education centers and programs send regular updates to parents on their child’s activities and progress, parents get the sense that their child is receiving the individualized attention needed to thrive. This creates a level of trust between parents, child care providers and the center that makes parents want to remain a part of your daycare community.
You can help parents reinforce what is taught in your classrooms by providing insight into their children’s activities, curriculum and learning objectives!
As part of Procare’s Six C’s of Connection blog series, we’ll outline below a few ways that Procare helps you communicate with the families you serve.
Communicate Through the Procare Mobile Child Care App
The Procare child care app helps you communicate through announcements and by helping you instill trust among parents by involving them in their children’s day-to-day activities and sharing developmental milestones.
When you can provide families with this type of information through a daycare app on their child’s progression, you set yourself apart from other child care centers in your area lacking such a strong focus on education.
Parents can see their child’s activities that are shared by your teachers. This lets families see what their children are doing and learn what’s happening in their day, including when and how long they napped, what they ate, in addition to videos and learning updates. This is a great perk of using a teacher parent communication app.
The app records student attendance and the transfers of kids to different rooms. It also records parents’ signatures and captures answers on a drop-off form that give teachers important information.
Make Sure Your Tours Show Off What Makes Your Center Special
Tours of your child care center are the first impression parents get of your business and vital to communicating what your center can offer. If your tours don’t inspire trust, parents won’t enroll their kids in your program and your center won’t grow.
Highlight what makes your center different from the others in your area. Make sure you spotlight what makes your daycare the best in town, including several glowing reviews from past or current customers. And make sure prospective families have your phone number and email address.
Following up with parents who’ve toured your center is key! Make communicating by text messages a priority.
Check out our blog that shares five tips on how to improve tours at your child care center.
Still Communicating with Paper? Try eDocuments!
Parents like knowing they can fill out enrollment paperwork, and other documents, online at a time and place that’s convenient for them. When your center offers this option, it’s a competitive advantage for you over centers still relying on stacks of paperwork.
Procare Solutions gives you the eDocuments feature, which allows you and your families to electronically sign documents.
Using eDocuments, you can create an electronic signature, format documents such as enrollment contracts and store signed documents in one central location and within the Procare platform. And it’s available through the Procare app!
This feature takes much of the hassle out of reminding parents and staff to complete their paperwork. You can prompt them to review documents by email, and they can digitally sign a document — no need to download, print, sign, then return to you.
Take a look at how easy it is for parents to sign and digitally return a permission form:
Treat Parents as Your Partners
Parents know their child best, so use this to your advantage! Your relationship with parents should be a partnership working to help the child succeed. Parents can offer valuable feedback on new activity ideas and healthy snack suggestions.
You can lead confidently and assure parents that you will inform them immediately if they have any concerns regarding their child and encourage them to do the same.
And don’t be afraid to communicate your expertise! Share the educational credentials and years of experience held by you and your teachers. These selling points can go a long way with parents, both current and those considering your child care center. So have the confidence to communicate all the great things you have to offer!
Share Newsletters and Send Texts
An easy way to communicate what’s happening in your daycare to help busy families make plans is through Procare’s newsletter function. This is a great digital strategy to boost family engagement!
You can choose to send your newsletter by email to every family who is enrolled in your early childhood education center, or narrow it to a class. The same is true for text messages. You can text individual people or send a group text (known as bulk texting) to many people at once. This is especially helpful when you need to close your center or program, such as for a snow day, or if there’s an unexpected problem with your building such as an electricity or water outage.
Procare also gives staff and families the ability to view upcoming schedules and calendars!
How Procare Can Help!
With Procare you can:
- Facilitate two-way conversations between your team and the parents you serve. All parents have to do is download the Procare child care app onto their phones.
- Share pictures and videos of daily activities, milestones achieved and more with parents in real time. That way parents don’t feel disconnected from their kids.
- Show parents what you’re teaching their kids while they’re at daycare. Doing so will give parents the insight they need to reinforce your lessons at home.
- Keep parents engaged with a center-wide calendar. With this feature, you’ll be able to promote upcoming events and remind parents of any approaching closures.
Interested in learning more about how Procare can help you better communicate, and even grow enrollment at your center? Request a demo today!
