I am seriously considering starting my own FDC over the coming 6months(ish). I’ve worked in centres for pretty much whole 10 year career. I absolutely love working with children and providing a safe space for them however I’m at the point where I feel burnt out and loosing my spark.
I’ve bounced around a lot this year trying to find a centre that shares the same values as me, values their staff and provides a well resourced environment and haven’t been able to do so.
I’m in the middle of researching different schemes in South East QLD and finding out as much information as I can so I can be as well informed as I can in order to make the decision on wether pursuing a FDC is 100% right for me.
Is anybody on here an experienced family day care educator that could offer some insight, guidance or mentorship? Any advice is absolutely appreciated!
I also have a few questions, and some might sound stupid, but I genuinely can’t figure out the answer
- How can supervision be maintained when I need a toilet break?
- Do you charge families a day fee, or a hourly fee?
- Is there any type of online tool or resource I can use to find out if my area needs more childcare or if it’s over-saturated?
- What are some of the running costs?
- What have you found you can and can’t claim back during tax time?
- How do you take care of your tax obligations? Do you do that yourself or have someone else (such as the scheme or accountant) do this for you? I’m also assuming that you’d register for GST and need to provide BAS statements?
- Any scheme recommendations?
- In the future I’m looking at starting a family, how would maternity leave work? Would I find another educator to cover me during that period? Would the scheme find alternative placements for the children? Would families need to seek their own care arrangements?
- Similar question when it comes to annual leave. Obviously I’d provide plenty of notice to families and would likely have leave planned prior to opening so families are aware of this upfront.
- what are some of the pros and cons that you’ve found?
- Are there any apps, online programs or planning diaries you’ve used to streamline your programming, planning and service management (like bookings, CCS ect) to make everything as quick and painless as possible? Every service I’ve worked at has had a different method for programming and planning and they all seem to be making the process more complicated than it needs to be, yet I can’t figure out how it could be made easier.
- Are educators open to having potential educators visit and see the day to day runnings?
- How challenging do you find it to keep on top of the cleaning?
- How do you overcome any isolation from working by yourself the whole day?
- What systems have you put in place to ensure that your parents only have access to your home during the your hours of operation?
Wow, so many questions- so many, many, many thanks in advance and I hope you all have a pleasant day
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