Do You CARE?

In his management column in Exchange, "Good management begins with good people," Dennis Vicars often shares practices that yielded results when he was managing child care centers.  In the May 2010 issue of Exchange, Dennis described his CARE (Customer Attention Retains Enrollment) program by telling a story....

"In our story, enrollment was coming in the front door and disenrollment... was going out the back door.  Upon examining the numbers, the story became obvious:  the children were fine, but the parents were not.  Through further research, I came to realize that 50% of disenrollment was taking place in the first 90 days.  Additionally, those families who remained after the first 90 days stayed enrolled on average over the next 24 months.

"The conclusion was obvious:  the parents, especially new parents, need attention as well as reminders that they made a good decision for their child by enrolling in our program.  Overcoming the new parent's guilt or the reluctant parent's parting with their child for his or her first early care and education experience can be daunting, but a challenge that can be mitigated through CARE.

"CARE, for my operation, is a systematic way to make sure that the director, teacher, and staff are in daily contact with the new parent.  The key to starting a CARE program is to make sure you have planned a daily/weekly device for reaching the parent and that your system is simple, easily executed, and performed by a designated person(s) within the organization.  Remember, the goal is to reduce parent anxiety within the first 90 days of enrollment so they begin to enjoy and celebrate the quality of the program that their child is experiencing on a daily basis."

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