Writing a Group Policy

What Should A Policy Include?

The decisions you will make as you develop your policy will relate directly to your budget and your ability to succeed in the child care business. You need to have fee policies that will make it clear to parents how you charge for services, how they need to pay, when they need to pay, and exactly what will happen if they do not pay. You need to make it clear to staff what they will and will not be paid for, what benefits you offer, and how you will manage other working conditions. Policy decisions need to be made before you can fine-tune an operating budget.

Required Policy Items:

• Admission: Describes the procedure parents go through to enroll their children
• Discharge of Enrolled Children: Tells parents what to do when they intend to withdraw their child, and explains why and how the center might terminate an enrollment
• Fee Payment and Refund
• Child Education: Explains what the children will be doing all day in your program and why they are doing these particular activities
• Child Guidance: Describes to staff and families your philosophy of guiding children’s behavior and the prohibited forms of punishment
• Emergency Plans: Describes procedures for all potential emergencies and staff responsibilities
• Health Care: Defines procedures for ensuring a healthy and safe child care operation. These policies relate directly to regulations
• Mildly Ill Child Care: If program wishes to be licensed for this specialty
• Nutrition: Defines food service procedures
• Transportation: See 251.04 on the Group Policy Checklist
• Orientation of New Staff and Volunteers: Explains who is responsible for orientating new staff, when this will happen, and how it will be documented
• Continuing Education of Staff: Describes for staff the process of obtaining and documenting continuing education
• Personnel: Including job descriptions, benefits, hiring/firing procedures

Writing a Policy from Scratch

Step One

• Develop an outline for each policy item listed above.
• Gather information  to read and review for each topic.
• Decide what procedures would work best for your unique program and write them down.

This is a long and involved process that takes a great deal of time and effort.

Step Two

Complete the Group Day Care Policy Checklist and indicate the page numbers of all the items listed. Remember, the items asterisked are required information that need to be included in your policy. If any are missing, add them to your policy.

Step Three

Mail a copy of your policy draft and the group policy checklist to your Pre-Licensing Technical Consultant for review and comment. When you meet with your Technical Consultant they will share any needed revisions, make recommendations to clarify language, and discuss best practices.

At the end of the Pre-Licensing process, a copy of your completed policies and checklist will be sent to your Licensing Specialist as part of your application packet.