Some parents, especially new parents, feel anxious about leaving their child with people they don’t know in a place they don’t know. They worry whether their kids will feel comfortable and happy, what activities they’ll be doing and even what they’re having for lunch. 

Centers can help relieve that anxiety by proactively communicating information such as meal schedules and activity plans to parents ahead of time.  And parents love seeing what their children are doing in real time.

As part of Procare’s Six C’s of Connection blog series, we’ll outline below a few ways that Procare helps provide confidence in knowing that your staff, children and families are safe and secure.

Know Who is Authorized to Pick Up Children

With Procare, each person who is authorized to pick up a child is issued his or her own unique four-digit pin. That includes parents and other people who are allowed to take a child from your center. 

This is beneficial during peak times when your center is bustling with many families arriving at the same time to pick up children. It’s often hard to keep track of everyone coming and going. Enabling a pin gives you confidence in knowing that you’re providing your families, as well as your staff, an extra layer of security in who is allowed in the building and authorized to pick up children.

And when you have changes in drop-off or pick-up procedures at your center, you can quickly alert parents with Procare’s app, which allows you to send messages either individually or via group messaging.

Once a child is checked in or out, that information is immediately populated into an attendance dashboard, where you can see how and when they checked in or out, their assigned room, hours attended, absences and parents’ signatures (if applicable). 

You can also track ratios and compile daily, weekly, biweekly and monthly reports!

Share Newsletters and Send Texts

Parents want to know what activities are coming up. An easy way to communicate this information to help busy families make plans is through Procare’s newsletter function.

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. Here’s another example: you could customize even further who would get the newsletter, such as only the families of children with food allergies who may need specific dietary information.

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.

Enable Contactless Check-in

Relying on paper sheets to record when children are dropped off and picked up just doesn’t work anymore. It makes these times of day too chaotic and it doesn’t give you the information you need to adhere to staff-to-child ratios in real time.

It’s just not a way of doing business that inspires confidence.

Plus, you may have to devote an employee to managing that process. And given the challenges in hiring and keeping staff in early childhood education centers, that’s not something you can afford to do. 

Procare’s integrated technology allows families and your staff to use QR codes and/or GPS technology for a completely touch-free check-in and check-out system. 

Parents can check in their children using the Procare app without entering your building or by scanning a code once inside.

Each school and child care center uses a unique QR code that can be displayed on a tablet, computer, smartphone or printed on paper and displayed at your daycare. 

When parents or other family members arrive, they simply pull up the Procare app on their phone, select the QR code icon and scan. After scanning the code, the parent will be able to check in their child directly from their phone. 

Procare’s technology allows your teachers and other staff to sign in and sign out easily and quickly using a tablet at your center or their own phone.

Timecards automatically are updated, which frees up your time spent on a mundane administrative task.

Share Frequent Updates

In just the past two years, centers have shared half a billion activities with parents using the Procare daycare parent communication app!

When you regularly share positive updates with parents, a relationship is created that makes it easier to report and talk about negative incidents or behavior issues in the future. 

And parents want to know bad news too, such as when their child scrapes a knee, feels unwell or throws a tantrum — and they want to know immediately, not hours later.  

That’s where Procare can help by relaying that information directly to parents through the app.   

It’s vital to commit to building relationships that allow for difficult conversations with parents when required. 

With a fully integrated and complete family engagement solution that includes classroom management, the Procare child care mobile app allows parents to be immersed in their children’s day-to-day activities ⁠— that includes tracking developmental milestones, sharing photos and videos as well as enabling two-way communication.

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.

How Procare Can Help!

Running an early childhood education center is a stressful job in which you’re often spread thin. When you can be confident that the people inside your center are safe and secure, that is one less thing on your plate. And sharing information quickly with parents increases their confidence in the care you’re providing to their children.

Procare equips you with the tools you need for top-notch daycare safety.

Two out of three child care businesses that use management software choose Procare. We’d love to show you why. 

Request a demo today to see for yourself how Procare can increase your confidence, and that of the families you serve, in the security of your child care center!