Introduction
Houston Community College is a higher education institution that provides learning opportunities to different communities which include Texas, Missouri city and Stanford. The communities around the colleges provide services to the college as they work in the institutions while some study there. Parents comprise a large portion of these communities. Helping them manage some of their responsibilities which include; taking care of their children while they are at work or studying would go a long way in improving their performance. The purpose of this paper is to propose the need to establish a daycare in the colleges which would go a long way in helping the parents and improving the quality of their work
Summary
Parenting is a hard responsibility especially if an individual has to work to provide for the family or attend school (Essa, p. 56). As a result of this, setting up a daycare at Houston Community College would help the parents a lot in taking care of their children while they are at work or attending school. This would help ease the stress on the workers and students parents hence improving their efficiency at work and ensuring better concentration in class. Additionally, establishing the daycare would result to increasing job opportunities and hence reducing unemployment which would in turn improve the economy. The daycare would not only serve the college but also the community around the institution, as those who are interested can benefit from the program since they would be allowed to participate.
Project description
A daycare at Houston Community College would enable the parents accomplish their responsibilities which include ensuring that the well being of their children would be taken care of. In addition to this, the parents would fulfill their responsibilities at work or in school thus reducing the stress levels of the parents. A daycare would eliminate the problem of parents bringing their kids to school or work which is a major distraction and cause of under performance to parents. Through a daycare that is close to parents, they would be enabled to monitor their children and respond to emergencies easily.
Rationale for proposing a daycare
Close to fifty percent of children living in the United States are currently cared for by people who are not close relatives of theirs (Colney, p. 30). According to Conley (p. 34) ”in two third parent homes, both parents work, providing a large and ever growing consumer base for the daycare industry.” Therefore establishing a daycare will not only help the parents but would also be a source of revenue to the institution.
Parents comprise close to a third of the working population of Houston Community College and close to an eighth of the students population. A large percentage of this population can’t afford paying for many services or they do not trust leaving their children to strangers without their supervision. This leads to parents bringing their children work or to school for the student parents. In this perspective, children become a hindrance to effective performance of the workers as they are supposed to take care of their children and perform their duties at the same time. For the student parent, they have to attend class and take care of their children leading to lower levels of concentration in their education.
After interacting with the parents who work or study in Houston Community College, it was clear that close to 90% of the few members of the community struggled with taking care of their kids and working at the same time. Some of them even had to bring their kids with them to work or school. An analysis of the effects of this to the performance of the individuals and population of the college indicate that long term goals of the institution are compromised. To avoid this, it would be appropriate for action to be taken to try and minimize the problem. The solution would therefore be setting up a daycare that is close to the parents and which is properly managed even if the community members would have to pay for the costs incurred by their children. (Heal & Hanley, pp. 56-58)
Work plan
Committee members would need to be composed. The committee would hold meetings at 9:30am on Mondays and Thursdays to organize and review the tasks to be accomplished. Mondays will be planning the week’s work and Thursday would be the day to review of the week’s progress. A work weekly progress report would be provided to the administration every Friday morning summarizing finished tasks, pending work and problems encountered. The following schedule would be implemented strictly as coordination and planning would be to ensure minimum wastage of time and success in the long run.
Project phases
Allison & Kaye (p. 76) recommends the following phases of developing a daycare project:
- Research and study of the requirements and needs of parents and the ages of their children
- Data analysis by the committee and the administration.
- establishing favorable locations where to set up the daycare and presentation of proposals to the administration
- renovating the agreed premises to meet the standards required for a daycare
- licensing, insuring and working on all the legal requirements
- Staffing and contract signing by qualified members.
- Establishing departments and training of the staff
- recruitment of children whose parents are interested in program
Project cost
The cost of setting up of a daycare ranges from $3000 to $5000 or less depending on the kind of daycare to be established. Running the daycare after establishing would require $1000 a month as there is need for restocking and payment of staff wages.The running cost would be funded by the daily fees paid by the parents which ranges from $30 to$70. The following is a breakdown of the budget for establishing the daycare:
- cost of research and study, $500
- purchase of equipment, $1000
- Renovation and upgrading of the premises. $2000
- licensing, insurance and advertising, $500
- Stocking of required supplies like sanitary storage, first aid kit, toys and food, $500
Conclusion
undertaking a research on the parents requirements and the wants of the children would facilitate setting up of a daycare that would be effective in assisting parents in taking care of their kids while at work or in class. Proper training of the staff, good organization of the departments and proper management of daycare that is proximate to the parents would therefore ease the stress levels of the parents hence facilitating better efficiency while working and high levels of concentration in class. The research performed would enable the staff run the daycare efficiently as they would have an understanding of the people to serve. The parents studying in Houston would benefit from the help they would get from the daycare and live less stressing lives and at the same time more people would be employed thus reducing unemployment levels.
Works Cited
- Allison, Michael & Kaye, Jude. Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations. Second Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2005.
- Conley, Brian. Alternative schools: a reference handbook. New York: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
- Essa, Eric. Introduction to early childhood education. Clifton Park, New York: Delmar Learning, 2003.
- Heal, Micheal. & Hanley, Paul. Evaluating preschool children’s preferences for motivational systems during instruction. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 40(2): 249–261, 2007.