Care Check Ins
Care Check Ins: What are They, and How do They Benefit Me?
What is a Care Check In?
Think of it as a brief customer satisfaction survey, 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 Promise, in which every program director indicates agreement for participation upon signing up with Wonderschool, and are a great way to help identify what is going really well for your program, and where Wonderschool could potentially offer additional resources or support to you, your program, or your families. We also want to encourage feedback from families, as an open dialogue 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 gives us both extra insight into how parents feel and their perceptions of your program. 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 with our team directly that they haven't shared with their director. If someone is dissatisfied about an aspect of their experience, we can talk to them and help.
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 as well as 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 Promise (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 directors (for example, if we see a lot of parents complaining about their child's transition into their program, we could beef up the training or resources we have around best practices and recommendations for transitions).
It could also mean product recommendations - 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 help you with parent communication tools. 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!
Not all parents are likely to participate in answering a survey, so does it give an accurate account of my program?
It gives a general picture of parent satisfaction, and we usually don't put much stock into one low score but over time we are getting a lot of great insight into the overall picture of a program. We look for at least 5 responses from parents before we feel any significant representation has been made (barring any unusual circumstances). The average overall rating for all WS programs, for all time since we started asking, is 4.85 out of 5...this comes from over 3,200 parent responses to date!
How are survey responses followed up?
Our goal is for parents to give an overall satisfaction score with an average of 4.5 or higher. If a parent gives a score of a 3 or lower, our team may reach out to the parent personally to learn more about their experience and ideally, to see if there is a way Wonderschool can help support them or their program for a great experience for all, and we sometimes make adjustments or provide additional support to a program if what the parent is experiencing is something that is affecting the success of the program overall (think: ensuring best practices and extra mentoring as needed).
We can also help parents understand what's realistic in terms of expectations (using the example of transitions again - if a parent is upset their child hasn't adjusted in the first week of care, we can help them understand what's typical to see in terms of behavior, timelines, and ideas/strategies for helping support the child (or parent) through the process).
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).
When can I expect to receive survey results?
On a quarterly basis, Wonderschool shares (de-identified) survey feedback with directors. If a serious issue is ever raised within survey results we would reach out to you right away. Survey results can be discussed with our team if you have any questions, and if you have any goals you want to set based on feedback (for example: Get outside more! Share more about the learning activities at your program! Etc) we are happy to help you create an action plan and support you in reaching these goals.