Day Care is a part of all working parents in the United States. There is a huge unmet need for sick child care. Working mothers become absent from work due to the fact that their children are not allowed to attend regular child care programs. More than 350,000 children under the age of 14 years of age are too sick to attend school or day care. When one of the workers needs to leave suddenly to take care of a sick child, the employers are usually less than thrilled.
Parents of sick children may also face the angry employers, and in the process have their paychecks docked for missed work, and they still have to pay the daycare fees even if the child is absent or can’t stay in the daycare. Providers, parents, child care professionals and employers don’t realize the need for sick child care programs due to the fact that there’s a lack of information, lack of licensing procedures for sick child care, difficulty getting insurance, and the funding challenges.
Employers need information on how their support of sick child care services could help reduce workers absenteeism costs. You could save costs of a replacement or lost work-time when an employee uses a sick child care program rather than the worker staying home with a child. Sick child care programs can provide an alternative for days when a child is mildly ill. The National Association for Sick Child Daycare (NASCD) is a non-profit, educational organization that is designed to quantify the need for sick child care. They support the establishment of high quality sick child care programs nationwide.
They also promote the establishment of new sick child care services by researching and disseminating needed information and promote and participate in sick child care research. They will provide as much information as needed. There are some disadvantages of a sick child care program. Some disadvantages could be the monitoring quality control difficulty in the visiting nurse program, the caregiver or surroundings may be unfamiliar to the child, the difficulty in recruiting or retaining qualified staff and usage may be low due to the unfamiliarity of the concept.
But if you look at the advantages as well it could benefit the employees and employer. The sick child care programs could improve the recruitment, employee morale and workflow, it could reduce the absenteeism and relieves stress on the parents and the employer, compared to the costs between $2 and $12 billion in loss, you would lose less money and production time, it could enhance the company’s image and the program would serve the community as well as the employees. Our organization should create a site in a central area, a site just for the employees’ children.
A cost-benefit analysis should be conducted to compare the short-term start-up cost and long-term operating cost with the productivity, absenteeism, and turnover advantages that sick child care assistance will provide. A child care benefits specialist from the NASCD can assist in this analysis. Then we could have a conference to discuss the analysis and determine the costs. The sick child care program would benefit not only the employees but the company as a whole.
