Center Name: Regina Eastview DayCare | Location: Saskatchewan, Canada
THE CHALLENGE
Deciding how to improve center operations to increase enrollment and quality of care
Offering high-quality child care is about more than education and care: it’s about supporting the entire family. Parents are not only looking for a center that provides a warm and responsive environment for their child, they’re also looking for one that can provide relationships that will strengthen the connection between the classroom and home. As many childcare leaders can attest, one of the most effective ways to support a center’s growth is by building trust and developing meaningful relationships with parents.
Doris Gaschler understands that trust is the catalyst for parent satisfaction, referrals, and ultimately growth. As the center director for Regina Eastview DayCare in Saskatchewan, Doris is an advocate for the field of early childhood education and she’s passionate about providing high-quality care. From Doris’s perspective, investing in tools to operate her center is investing in the community and the center’s growth.
Doris felt “stuck using an archaic system, in a modern world.” Pen and paper simply couldn’t cut it anymore. She was focused on improving the day-to-day operations and elevating the center’s standards of childcare, and that meant finding an efficient and easy-to-use tool for documentation, administration, billing and parent communication to improve the experience for everyone–from educators to parents. Doris found herself gravitating towards HiMama as a tool to build a centralized, one-stop shop for her center operations and parent communications.
As a director committed to providing high-quality care, Doris knew that simply offering written reports at the end of the day and a billing system that required the parents to pay in person, was no longer meeting her center’s needs. Doris started to realize that instead of spending time connecting with families, supporting educators, and monitoring the care children were receiving, she was bogged down with paperwork or chasing parents for missed payments. “I was constantly playing catch up”, Doris explained.
“There are some decisions that are really hard to make as a childcare Director. HiMama was not one of them. HiMama has been nothing but good to us and has helped immensely in our operations”
Doris Gaschler
THE SOLUTION
Investing in HiMama to build a strong and stable childcare center for years to come
Doris uses HiMama for all of her parent communication, as well as a tool for center and classroom management. With HiMama, each classroom at the center has an individual login, giving her educators unique access to document and track daily observations within their classroom, while also providing them with increased ownership in their communication with parents. Educators can now share photos, videos and classroom updates with families throughout the day. They can even include a specific developmental learning outcome for key classroom activities that aligns with state standards. This supports Doris’s goal of offering high-quality care, since each classroom can now share more detailed observations about a child’s development. These real-time updates give parents more insight into the education and progress that is happening in the classroom as well as more opportunities to feel connected to their child throughout the day.
Doris also took advantage of HiMama billing to help streamline a critical administrative task. With HiMama billing, parents can set up a profile and pay automatically from wherever they are. It also enables families to keep an eye on upcoming and overdue payments to help with household budgeting. According to Doris, this was one of the changes families appreciated most. Before HiMama, parents would sometimes miss payments and Doris would have to plan her schedule around catching them during drop-off or pickup times for reminders. Now, HiMama takes care of the reminders and Doris is no longer chasing parents down for payments, or constantly playing catch-up with overdue or missed payments.
“I just rave about HiMama: I am one of your biggest fans. I have never worked with any other software that offers an all-in-one solution to the same level HiMama does.”
Doris Gaschler
THE RESULT
HiMama helps them sell.
Since implementing HiMama, Doris has increased center efficiency and improved parent communication. Not only that, she’s now able to meet the needs of modern families. Doris shared that, “more and more parents are coming into the center asking about technology and how we communicate.” Switching to digital communication is an inevitable change, and centers that are already doing it are securing a competitive advantage. Doris explained that some parents would come to tour the center “already knowing about HiMama and saying they were excited to use it”.
“HiMama is elevating awareness of our center and putting us ahead of the curve” – Doris Gaschler
The success that Doris has experienced since implementing HiMama shows that quality care encompasses much more than lesson plans in the classroom. It includes creating a welcoming and responsive environment for everyone, including families. When parents feel engaged, respected and experience a high return on their investment in quality care, they are more willing to come back and refer friends and family to the center.
“What I can show for the value of HiMama is that if I were to tell our parents we had to get rid of it, they would revolt. I believe the teachers would as well. I am confident that the parents would even offer to increase their tuition just so we could continue to use HiMama.”
Doris Gaschler
Regina Eastview Daycare is one of many HiMama customers who have elevated their quality of care with HiMama.
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