Child Care Complaints (continued)

• Paying child care fees late.
• Picking up and delivering children late.
• Bringing children who are contagious or too sick to be comfortable in care.
• Not notifying the program when children are going to be absent.
• Expecting a provider to save a space for free while the child is on vacation or home sick.
• Not giving enough notice to the program when leaving child care. (Two weeks is the acceptable minimum; a month is better.)
• Wanting to pick up spotless children from child care.
• Making “good-byes” worse by lingering too long even after the staff has hinted “it would be a good idea to leave.”

Some of these complaints are the result of parents and/ or providers not following the program contract or rules (picking up a child late, not giving notice about a rate increase). Some of them are just plain old disagreements (whether children should be spotless after a day of care or whether the T.V. is on too much). And some of these complaints are violations of the licensing standards that the State Department of Social Services (DSS) has set for child care programs (enrolling too many children, leaving children unsupervised). When trying to decide what to do about a problem, a parent or provider should analyze the type of complaint s/he has before deciding how to proceed.

Resolving Disputes Over Program Rules

When either party thinks a program rule is being violated, first check with the written contract. Sometimes you may find your memory is playing tricks on you and what you thought was the rule is slightly (or significantly) different. Sometimes, on checking, you will find out that you are right! When this is the case, pointing out the rule to the offending party (in a “non-offensive” way!) could end the disagreement. And, then again, it might not.

Some providers don’t even follow their own rules and there are usually chronic rule-breakers in any parent group. Written contracts alone won’t make these folks conform. Parents and providers should be able to expect that a written contract will be followed – otherwise why bother to have one? If standing up for your rights results in bitterness, the relationship was probably never going to work anyway. In these cases, the provider or parent may simply decide to stop doing business with each other. On occasion, bending a rule can work for both parties. For example, if a parent always pays the child care fee late because a provider’s payment schedule doesn’t coincide with the parent’s pay period, wouldn’t it make sense for the provider to accept a different payment schedule from this family?

Dealing With Personal Disagreements

Some disagreements have nothing to do with rules or regulations. The parent and the provider simply have different views about children and child development. Unless the disagreement is so strong that changing care is the only answer, compromise may work. Before voicing your concern, take the time to decide if some middle ground might be acceptable. For example, perhaps you, as the parent, need Susie to be superclean only on Friday nights when you go to Grandma’s house. You might ask if you can send extra clothes that day and have the child changed just before pickup time. Another example might be that one of your child care parents is always late on Mondays. In this situation, you, as the provider, may be willing to charge a flat, additional fee on an ongoing basis to avoid the hard feelings every Monday. It’s up to each of you, parents and providers, to decide whether maintaining the relationship is worth a compromise.

It seems useful to point out here that, if a parent really takes time to screen carefully when looking for child care, many disagreements of this type can be avoided. Parents who visit a program several times before making a selection are probably not going to have as many surprises (or disappointments) as the parents who only shop for child care over the phone. There is no substitute for seeing a program in action. Programs can also help by not promising services or activities they have no intention of delivering. In the long run, a program is asking for trouble by attracting parents in this way.

Parents must accept that the provider has the last word in these “personal” areas. Child care programs have great flexibility in setting their rules, hours, rates, schedules and activities, etc. If a program is unwilling to change its method of operation to please an individual family, the family either has to live with the situation or change care. Sometimes the provider decides to end a child care relationship when personal differences are unresolvable.