Starting a Daycare Center
A daycare center
is a facility that houses children from birth to school age in a safe, supervised setting with nutrition, play, rest and educational opportunities that are age-appropriate. Can't you describe a Home Daycare in the same way? Yes, you're right but there are almost always differences in scale, sophistication, facility and staffing between a home daycare and a daycare center.
A daycare center is a separate facility or part of a facility that has been specifically licensed for the purpose of providing care for children. That means that the daycare center facility meets special code requirements for that purpose. Thos special requirements may include handicapped access, special fixtures that can be manipulated by children, a specific number of toilet facilities by age group, specific amount of kitchen space by age group. A home daycare must provide toilet facilities, kitchen facilities, etc. but the requirements are more flexible, taking into account that the setting is an existing home.
Because there are significant costs associated with providing this specialized facility space, usually a daycare center is larger than a home daycare setting. In fact, in most states, there is a maximum capacity for home daycares but daycare center capacity may be limited only by the availability of appropriate space and staffing.
One of the most significant differences between the daycare center and the home daycare is the commingling of age groups. Home daycare settings usually supervise all age groups in a single physical space. This means that babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers will be together much of the day. The advantages of this situation can be that it is more representative of the typical family setting, younger children learn from older children, and older children learn how to share with younger children. On the other hand, the daycare center is usually divided by age group and each group has a different staff to child ratio, set by state regulation. The advantages of this daycare center setting are that children learn from their peers without pressure from older children, there is greater opportunity for age-centered play and educational curriculum and care givers are specifically trained to work with each age group.
Each type of daycare center offers its own special advantages.
