What is an "In-Home Daycare?"

An in-home daycare is a form of daycare that is offered in someones home, condo, or apartment. You do not need a business or daycare license to start one yourself as long as you operate within a certain number of children (determined by your state). Starting one yourself can take you as little as one day to get set up and you can start working from home with an average salary much faster than any other work from home start up business you could try. An added bonus is that you can care for your own children while running the business and they are not counted into the legal ratio of children you are allowed to watch. So if you are a mom and want to stay home with your kids but can't afford to, this is the post for you!

Step 1: Research Your Area & Demographic

Before you decide anything, I want you to do some research on your demographic. Search the web for local daycares near you and find out their rates for both full-time and part-time kids. You may need to call them as they often do not provide this information on their websites.

In addition, notice the hours that daycares are open (generally 6am to 6pm). You do not need to have your business open this long, for example, when I started mine I was open from 7am to 4pm. However, I did lose a lot of potentials because of my time restrictions and the more open availability you have, the better. If you do not want a larger time slot, then you will need to make your business more attractive by having really great rates.

Both availability and rates are a give and take. If you wish to open as soon as possible, then having great availability and low rates should get you up and running quickly. Choose your availability and rates based on the information you find out and you are ready to move on.

Step 2: Find Out Your State Ratio

Small note, most daycares provide meals for children which include breakfast, lunch and a snack. Most in-home daycares, including the one I started, offer meal services in the same way. This is usually an expectation parents have, although you should not be expected to provide baby food, formula, diapers and wipes.

One of the scariest things I have seen in this business is when in-home daycare owners cut corners, specifically if they take in an illegal number of children. At the very least, this could warrant a CPS citation with an immediate shut down of your business, putting all of your parents in an incredibly difficult position. However, even more tragically, this can result in a potential liability if a child is harmed under your care.

I recently saw a news story of a 4 month old baby who was tragically killed at an in-home daycare. Regardless of if negligence was involved (which was not stated in the article), the daycare owner had an illegal number of children and will most likely be held responsible for the child's death. Please please please do the right thing, not only for your safety, but also for the safety of the children.

Every state has guidelines for in-home daycares that you can easily find with a quick google search. For the state I operated in, my ratio was 5 non-relative children on any given day (much lower than the average).

Step 3: Decide Your Age Group

A quick way to overwhelm yourself is to take in any age group from 0-5 years old. I would never recommend this to anyone, especially to moms who also have their own children. Pick one age group and stick to that. I personally enjoyed the 2-3 year age range as they still napped and even if they aged out of my daycare, I had instilled a nap or "quiet time" from the very beginning so they could expect this even at an older age. I would have had an incredibly difficult time if an older child came in who wasn't used to my schedule and then wreaked havoc on nap time (which was my 2 hour break). If you do want to take in only 3-4 year olds, just be aware that your "quiet time" will probably only be a maximum of 1 hour, so that is another give and take.

Also, the younger you go, the more you can charge. For example, infant daycare rates in a traditional setting are usually double the rate of a 4 year old. Of course infants require much more physical work than a 4 year old, but if you love infants, than maybe that is the right fit for you!

Step 4: Photograph Your Home

Now that you have your details sorted out, we need to market your new business. I want you to photograph your home's common areas, make sure they are clean and kid friendly. Think like a parent. What would you want to see in a home if you were dropping your kid off with a stranger? Parents already do this with traditional daycare but have automatic trust because the daycare is a licensed business in a professional kid friendly building. Sadly, with my personal experience in daycare settings, many daycares provide less than adequate care for children. The care that you provide may be 10000% better than what parents could be paying for in a traditional setting. We need to make sure that is communicated to the best of your ability in the photos.

An unnecessary step but one that can make a huge impact with parents is getting your own inexpensive camera system. Ideally, getting one that links to a parent's phones through an app for them to watch their kids during the day, would be best. This is also great if a child gets hurt under your watch as you will have the incident on camera, ready to send off to a parent (which I would try and do). If you do not have the funds, don't worry about it. You can start this business without buying anything if you are a mom who already has kid friendly items.

This camera system is one from Amazon that uses an app called "Blue Rams." I used this with my parents and they seemed to really enjoy it and use it often.

Step 5: Make Your Listing

Now that you have determined your hours, rates, age group, and have gathered well put together photos of your home, it is time to make your listing!

Most major cities have a local "Babysitting and Nanny" Facebook group (or groups) where parents or care providers post their needs or services. I am attaching a photo of the listing I created in my local city as an example of what yours could look like. I never had issues connecting with parents and I believe part of the reason was because of my listing strategy.

Make sure your personal Facebook page is professional. Have a nice photo of yourself or your family and double check that your posts are appropriate and God honoring. Parents will be looking at this, and if you have nothing to hide, this shouldn't be a problem for you.

Step 6: Connect With Parents

You can always advertise and spread the word around your church or neighborhood with flyers. This is another great way to market if you do not want to make connections with families you do not know.

Now parents are contacting you, and you are excited! What do you do? I would first recommend setting up a phone call with a parent to answer any questions they have and to make sure they are the right fit. Sometimes people do not read your full listing or miss something and you don't want to waste your time if they are unwilling to pay your rates or work with your availability preferences. If the call goes well, just like a traditional daycare, you can set up a tour.

During the tour, you will want to show the parent around your house and point out the places the children play, sleep, and eat. Make sure that when your first greet them, you warmly interact with the child first. Get down on the child's level or address the baby in the parents arms by confirming the name and saying hello. This will build trust with the parents and the child you are hoping to serve.

Set up some toys for the child/children and sit down with the parents in a comfortable space to discuss details. This is where you will discuss your daily schedule, your meals (if you provide them), your contract, late policy, exc..

Make sure to continually eyeball and check on the child if they are in another room, this will signal attentiveness and safety to the parents. The best scenario is if the child can play in front of you so that you can watch the child and parent interact together (and hopefully you can interact with the child as well).

In addition to communicating safety to the parents, this is also strategic for you. Pay attention to how the parent disciplines their child (if the opportunity arises), this will give you a good gauge on how they operate at home and their preference on discipline. In addition, watch how the child interacts with your kids and if they get along. I have done tours with parents where I knew immediately their child was not going to work in my home based on the parents discipline strategy (or lack thereof) and the way their child treats my child. Some other red flags would be if the child is running around screaming, tearing out every toy, not listening to their parents, exc... The child may be having a bad day, but sadly, that is not a risk I would recommend taking.

This interview is not just for them, but for you.

Step 7: Open the Daycare

Now that you have signed contracts with parents, your business can officially begin (depending on the start dates you agree upon with the parents of course).

I want you to be able to start this business for free because I am passionate about helping moms get control of their finances while also staying home with their kids if they want to. So I want to provide you with a FREE in-home daycare daily routine, sample contract, and incident report for you to use as a resource. These are the documents I created and used for my daycare and they worked great for me.

Daily Routine:

This routine follows the standard routine of most traditional daycares, including the time slots. Of course you can change this around for yourself to fit your needs, and having a free Canva account should allow you to make edits if you need to.

Incident Report

This is an almost identical version of the incident reports used in daycares. This should be used if a child falls and scrapes a knee, gets bitten, or breaks a leg. Nothing should be left undocumented for your own protection. Of course if something is as series as a broken leg, you would need to call the parent and get their help immediately. I also recommend taking a picture of the injury to text the parent, along with this incident report filled out.

Sample Contract

This is a sample contract of what would be great things to add into your own. Will you do water play? Field trips? Do you have permission to call 911? Does the child have allergies? These are some basics you should include with your contract. Not only that, but you will need to decide to your late policy for both your payment and if the child does not pick the child up in time. The stricter the better, I have been in situations that I could have avoided if I would have set my policies from the beginning.

There you go!

My name is Selah! I share Biblical finance and budgeting for Christian moms.

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