Child Care Centre : A Brief Run-Through 

Child care, sometimes known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child (or multiple children at the same time) with ages ranging from two weeks of age to 18 years. 

This care for children typically refers to the care provided for by caregivers that are not the child’s parents. Child care actually covers a wide spectrum of professionals, institutions, contexts, activities, and social and cultural conventions. Child care Karana, being in Australia, is covered under the government’s Child Care Subsidy scheme.

Child care centres

In essence, child care centres provide care for groups of children, often placed in classrooms by age. Typically, they have staff members who takes care for children. Typically, too, a child care centre is managed by a centre director, who oversees the program and its staff.

Usually, these centres are usually located in commercial buildings and operated by individual owners, for-profit chains, government agencies, public schools or nonprofit entities like some faith-based organizations and community organizations. They often offer full-time child care services.

Child development

Early child care is actually an important and often overlooked component of child development. This care can be provided to children by a variety of individuals and groups. The caregiving role may also be taken on by the child’s extended family. 

Another important form of childcare is that of centre-based childcare. Instead of a familial care giving, these responsibilities may be given to paid caretakers, orphanages or foster homes to provide care, housing, and schooling.

Caregivers who have already worked within the context of a centre-based care (including crèches, daycare, preschools and schools) are the main personnel in these child care centres. At home, the home-based care is provided by nannies or family day care.  

Extensive training

The majority of child care institutions available require child care providers to have extensive training in first aid and be CPR certified. In addition, background checks, drug testing at all centres, and reference verifications are typically required from them. 

The child care can consist of advanced learning environments that include early childhood education or elementary education. The objective of the program of daily activities at a child care facility should be to foster age appropriate learning and social development.[US 1] 

In many cases the appropriate child care provider is a teacher or person with educational background in child development, which requires a more focused training aside from the common core skills typical of a child caregiver.

Quality child care

Access to and quality of childcare have a variety of implications for children, parents and guardians, and families. The quality of the child care can have long-term impacts on educational attainment for children. 

Parents, particularly women and mothers, see increased labor force attachment when child care is more accessible and affordable. In particular, increased affordable child care opportunities have economic benefits for immigrant communities and communities of color.

Essential functions

A child care centre essentially functions as a microcosm of a larger building. This is because they are energy intense because they include their own systems and they operate for longer hours than the typical office building. 

Child care centres include spaces for so many things. These inclusions are work (or play), food preparation and food consumption. The other inclusions are the restrooms, the cleaning and the storage. The other uses for the staff areas, gross-motor room and outside playground. 

As planned, the considerations are carefully selected for such needs given to mechanical, electrical, and lighting systems. This is to balance the energy needs of the children and energy efficiency goals of the building or space.

Goals 

Primarily, the focus of child care facilities are to promote centres that are child-oriented, developmentally appropriate, beautiful, environmentally-sensitive, health promoting and functional. Particularly important is addressing the environmental health in child care facilities because 

the children’s exposure may be higher relative to their size than adults. Children’s normal activities, such as putting things in their mouths or playing on the floor, can also result in exposures that adults do not face. 

In addition, some environmental contaminants may affect children disproportionately. This is because their bodies are still developing and growing and organs can be more easily harmed.

A child may be in a centre up to 12,500 hours if he or she starts as an infant and continues until entering school, more than the amount of time he or she will spend in school from kindergarten through the end of high school. 

Since the children spend such long hours at the centre, the design of their spaces is especially critical. The design effort must allow for, and be sensitive to, the differences in space attributes for children and those for adults. 

Choosing a Child Care Centre

As its purpose, child care centres offer a variety of services and can include full- and part-time care. They may also serve children of a variety of ages, including infant, toddler, preschool, and school-age children.

Families choose child care centres for a variety of reasons, including many of the following.

By nature, families may like their children to be cared for in groups with other children of the same age.

They may also like the structured, classroom-like environment a child care centre provides. In the same manner, families appreciate that a child care centre may offer a wider variety of equipment, supplies, and activities.

They may also appreciate having many adults present to care for children.

Impacts 

In the centre, the occupant buy-in and cooperation is essential to maintaining indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and the health, financial, and human impacts associated with it . 

Goals can only be identified and achieved if executed hand-in-hand with the occupants. The children are expected to feel at home in the child care centre. Modeling healthy environments at the centre can lead to similar behaviors carrying over to their homes.

Influence 

Studies had shown that a student’s learning environment can influence  in a major way their learning ability. Lower absenteeism and improved attention are some of the positive impacts that can result from improved environments. 

Many of the same benefits can be paralleled in early childhood care facilities. Children, from infants through pre-school, are developing physically and mentally at a rapid rate. The spaces that are healthier indoor environments will provide for healthier biological system development. 

The cleaner indoor air, access to full-spectrum daylight and views of nature, developmentally appropriate furnishings and equipment and enhanced acoustics can very well provide a healthier indoor environment for development and learning to occur. Also, child care staff can also benefit from an improved work environment.

There is an educational value in children being able to see and experience aspects of sustainable design as well. Having children understand and participate in simple energy conservation habits like recycling, and water conservation habits makes these principles part of daily life and valued in the future.