Question

Photo of Vicki Gabriel

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Childcare procedure - how do you do it?

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We offer childcare for some of our events. Some require payment. All require names, ages, event name, parent name, parent cell number, special instructions or allergies (to ensure proper adult to child ratio), by event. We are currently doing this extremely clunky. I am asking for child info on an event registration form, and allowing to pay at that time.

To complicate things we have events that are ongoing (say a 10 week class). People don't want to register kids and pay for all up front. Should we re-register every week? How can we pay every week and not re-register adult for class? 

Does anyone else do all these things? How do you register the children, by event? How do you report to the childcare ministry (registration information, payment information child and parent information all in different tables in the Rock)?

Does the Rock have a clean way to handle childcare from registration to payment to checking in? I am willing to start from the beginning with any native Rock procedures that are in place.

Thanks for any advice.

  • Photo of Kelley Langkamp

    1

    Vicki,

    We just completely re-structured our childcare for groups and events partly because we were having similar problems. We went to a punchcard system. People pay for "punches" by family and then are able to use them for any child (5th grade and below) at any event/group where there is paid childcare. We actually have very few events that have paid childcare any more so it's mostly groups. The punch purchases are an event registration with a fee where they choose how many they want to purchase and pay. They can purchase as many/few as they want. (Punches are $4 each and buy 2 get 1 free). This helps with the not wanting to pay it all up front. Also, if you leave a group for some reason, you can use the punches for your next group or your spouse's group.

    I created a workflow that takes the punches purchased, calculates free punches and a total. It then adds the parent to a group with the punch counts as group member attributes. Childcare staff has a dynamic data page where they can see who is in the group and hasn't picked up their punch card and how many punches they get. The physical cards can be kept at the counter in a Rolodex or something so that the parents don't have to keep track of them.

    Childcare check-in is set up just like the weekend service check-in as far as Rock is concerned. Anyone 5th grade or below can check-in. The printers are located behind a staffed counter. A parent checks in at the computer, goes to the counter, the staff person finds their physical card and punches it then gives them their stickers.

    Ministries or departments also purchase punch cards that can be used to provide "free" childcare for a specific person or group if they desire.

    Our goal is to eventually do away with the physical cards and have the punches tracked entirely through Rock at some point in the future. 

    The biggest drawback that I think we've seen to this is that when groups are starting up, childcare doesn't really have a way to know how many kids are going to be there on which day. They just have to kind of guess based on adult group memberships/registrations and go off past numbers. Once we are a week or 2 into the new groups session, they have a much clearer idea what staffing needs are.

    Since our system is so different than yours, I'm sure I didn't hit all your questions. You could definitely do a dynamic data block with the reporting information that you need to pass along to the childcare staff. There really isn't a one size fits all type system for this since churches all handle childcare so differently.