iCare Software

Giving parents more transparency

Giving parents more transparency

Parents want greater transparency into their child’s early education. Daycare is no longer just about a safe space for children while parents are at work. It’s also about supporting the child’s developmental milestones and sharing those through parent-teacher communication strategies.

Learn how to improve your center’s communication skills and build better transparency to communicate to parents the value that you bring to their families.

Parent-Teacher Communication Strategies for Greater Daycare Transparency

Excellent parent-teacher communication doesn’t just happen. You have to plan for it and ensure you have the right tools to make it possible. Here’s your guide to improving how you communicate with parents to build a stronger daycare strategy.

  1. Build a Communication Plan

Parent communication cannot be an afterthought for your childcare center. You need to have a plan for staying in touch with parents throughout the day and throughout their time as your client. Consider engaging in these communication tools that help teachers communicate with parents.

  • Pick-up and drop-off communication: make time for teachers to engage with parents at drop-off and pick-up. This is challenging because these are the busiest times of the day. But they are essential face-to-face opportunities for parents to engage with their child’s teachers.
  • Send a newsletter: setting up a newsletter process can help you communicate upcoming events and reminders for parents while also showcasing improvements you’re making to the center. Highlight simple things, like a new book or a recap of a recent field trip.
  • Text messages: making communication simple will help parents feel involved in their child’s care. Offering text message communication will allow parents to interact with you the same way they interact with their friends and other acquaintances.
  • Offer a grade or learning report: biannual learning reports that recap the milestones the student has reached during that period can help parents see the value of what you offer.
  • Allow parents to call if they need to: while digital communication allows for greater transparency, you still want to offer parents the opportunity to call with a question or concern. Make sure you have someone answering the phone and responding to inquiries throughout the day to create the greatest transparency.
  1. Offer a Parent App

There’s an app for everything now. If you want to be the most modern childcare option and ensure constant transparency, offer a daycare app. The app should allow parents to check their children in and out to reduce these areas of friction.

Mornings are busy times of day, and parents want to get home and move on at the end of the day. Speeding up these processes can help you delight parents and meet their needs.

Adding an app can help you not just with transparency but in reducing repetitive tasks, updating waivers and paperwork when needed, and alerting parents when their form of payment is expiring or outdated. A parent app also allows you to send notifications and reminders to view the daily summary after pick-up. This helps transition care smoothly back to parents

It puts parents in control of managing their child’s profile, reserving a spot within a program or class, and reviewing attendance if they have questions about a bill or other aspect of their child’s care. 

  1. Open a Parent Portal They Can Access from Anywhere and on Any Device

While a childcare app is helpful and puts parents in control of their child’s experience, a parent portal is accessible from anywhere, anytime. Parents and other caregivers can collaborate on managing a child’s care while also updating profile information from a laptop or computer if they prefer.

And with a parent portal, parents can enroll in your program digitally to reduce the number of paper documents you house and manage. That means that parents can send all that crucial data directly into your childcare software to reduce the chance of inputting errors when staff copies it from the paper forms.

Parents can chat with teachers directly while at their desks at work or even keep the tab open for updates in the journal section all day long. They’ll feel more connected to their child’s care, and it can work wonders for parent engagement.

With the right parent engagement strategies, you can improve retention to reduce marketing expenses and the need to be looking for ways to maximize enrollment constantly: the less student turnover, the better.

See the leading childcare app transforming parent-teacher communication and helping childcare centers demonstrate the value they offer parents by scheduling an iCare Software demo now.

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