Parent Care Check Ins: What They Are & How Do They Benefit Me?

To watch an overview video about Parent Care Check Ins, click here.

What is a Care Check In? 

Think of it as a brief customer satisfaction survey, similar to those used by other marketplaces such as care.com, Etsy, Uber or Lyft, even Amazon, in which we ask parents to rank their satisfaction using a 1-5 star scale on the following topics: 

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your child’s care? 
• The atmosphere is positive and welcoming 
• The physical space is safe and clean 
• It is an enriching learning environment 
• My child spends enough time outdoors daily 
• I receive regular communication about my child’s progress 
• Regular communication about program info (calendars, staff, etc.) is displayed or shared 
• Interactions between my childcare provider and my family are caring and positive 

Why these specific questions? 

These questions are reflective of the Wonderschool Quality and Safety Vision, and are a great way to regularly collect feedback from your families about their experience in your program. Collecting feedback and regular parent engagement are both considered best practices when it comes to high quality early learning programs, and are recognized by most if not all state Quality Ratings Systems. An an open dialogue between parents and providers strongly compliments the idea of strong partnerships between directors and families. 

So how does this benefit me? 

Parent communication, and the more the better, is a good thing. A great thing, in fact! You get a lot of it directly from parents in your program, and if we can help collect additional feedback to share with you, it provides extra insight into how parents and children are doing. Parents at Wonderschool programs are overwhelmingly satisfied with their child’s and family’s experiences. What a thing to celebrate! Occasionally, parents will share feedback indicating concern (most typically indicating they would like more communication about their child's day, or about your program) and having a mechanism with which to invite feedback can help you keep tabs on improvements you want to make, both over the short or longer term. 

How does Wonderschool use the feedback shared by parents? 

We think of the surveys as a great pulse check for every program to ensure all is going well, and an opportunity for parents to give glowing feedback to us about their program and occasionally, an opportunity to give feedback they may not feel comfortable saying to a provider directly.

It’s also a great cross-check for our Quality and Safety Vision (parent feedback about daily outside time, learning environment, and provider interactions, specifically).

And finally, we use the results to gauge where WS can provide more. This could mean more training for you (for example, if we see a lot of parents who are worried about their child's transition into their program, we could host a training or build additional resources for all providers around best practices and recommendations for transitions). 

It could also mean new products and features for you - for example, if we see over time that "child communication" consistently receives the lowest score from parents across the board (spoiler alert - it does! Parents absolutely crave information about their children and their child’s day), it provides an opportunity for Wonderschool to build parent communication tools for you. A very concrete example of this is the Wonderschool app - this was built specifically to support directors in offering this very real and needed communication to parents on a daily basis. 

We are also using the surveys as our first round of program “reviews,” which you will see reflected on your websites - all of this great feedback from your families should be shared far and wide!

How often do the surveys get sent out to parents? 

Each parent of an enrolled child receives the survey at the end of their first week of enrollment, and then on a quarterly basis after (i.e., every 3 months). 

Where can I find my program's survey results? 

Parent feedback is always available to you on the Analytics page of your Wonderschool dashboard. If you need any help reading the data on that page, reach out to our team any time for assistance! 

What messaging is shared with parents?

Hi {Parent Name},

Your child care program, {Program Name}, is using Wonderschool tools to help operate their business. One service provided through Wonderschool is the opportunity for child care providers to collect regular feedback from families, which is an important component of running a high quality early learning program. 

Periodically, you will receive the below 3-minute parent feedback survey which will be shared with your provider. Your feedback is highly valuable and helps inform {Provider Name} about your family’s experience in the program and ensure excellent care for your child. Your feedback will be shared anonymously with your provider; it may also be shared anonymously with other parents interested in the program. 

Please select one answer to the question below. When you click your selection, you will be prompted with a few more questions to complete.

Q. Overall, how satisfied are you with the quality of your child’s care at {Program Name}? 

Very satisfied

Satisfied

Neutral

Dissatisfied

Very dissatisfied

To learn more, check out this quick video!