Au
Pairs: Live-in education and care providers, often from
other parts of the country and the world
Childcare
at Yale: Education and care for groups of children offered
to Yale employees and students.
School-Age
Care: Private school, public school, and after school
options in the Greater New Haven area.
Summer
Camps: Day camp options in the Greater New Haven area.
Center-based care
Is
generally convenient and the easiest to access of the potential
childcare solutions.
It
is also one of the more expensive options.
The
quality of care can vary widely. Spend at least an hour watching
what goes on in the classroom; your child will be there for
many more hours.
Demand
for center-based care is high.
Centers
are licensed by the State of Connecticut, which means they
have met basic safety standards.
Centers
can also choose to be accredited by the National Association
for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which means they
have met high quality standards for early care and education.
While
individual centers may vary, research on groups of childcare
center indicates that NAEYC accredited centers are of higher
quality than other centers. Children attending NAEYC accredited
centers have been found to be more ready for kindergarten
than children attending other centers.
NAEYC.org
provides a searchable data base for NAEYC accredited centers.
Licensed
family daycare is regulated and monitored by the state through
safety audits, which increases the likelihood that the care
is safe and that the individual doing the care is professional.
Licensed
family daycare homes typically consist of one adult and up
to 6 children, only two of whom can be under 2.
Family
daycare providers often are mothers and/or teachers of young
children who wish to care for their own child and/or others
in their home.
At
their best, they provide convenient, flexible, relatively
inexpensive, home-like environments with lots of individual
attention, structure, and nurture.
These
types of environments can be especially good at meeting the
needs of children 0-3.
There
is a wide range in the quality of family daycare and it can
be time consuming to find.
State-run
Infoline provides phone referrals (211) and web-based
referrals to licensed family daycare providers.
Webpages
for
some area childcare settings are sponsored by the Community
Foundation for Greater New Haven:
Families
may prefer this arrangement because of its flexibility and
the personal attention to the child and family it provides.
You
can find babysitters and nannies through placing ads, screening,
interviewing, and hiring them yourself.
Placing
ads in large newspapers, like the New Haven Register,
can be helpful but it is often more fruitful to place
an ad in the smaller, local weekly or bi-weekly papers
for your community.
When
writing your ad, be sure to include the information most
important to you. For example, hours needed, experience
with children, non-smoker, licensed driver, own transportation,
etc. This will help to ease your screening process.
You
may choose to have a phone answering machine pose further
screening questions to help you to decide who to call
back, i.e., “If you are calling regarding our childcare
ad, please tell us something about your background and
experience with children and how best to reach you”.
You can then call back the candidates you consider to
be the your favorites to ask further questions and, potentially,
set up interviews.
Placing
an ad in the classifieds can be done online. To place
an ad in Greater New Haven, look for the Classifieds link
is on your local newspaper's home page.
You
may also choose to pay a fee to a service, which will screen
and refer applicants to you to interview.
(There
are 4 such services listed in the New Haven phone book
under Child Care Centers and Services, and of those, 2
are local). The cost of such services is in the range
of $1000, if a hire is made from the referral.
The
service does a background check (i.e., criminal record)
and sets the minimum wage based on the applicant's level
of experience.
Au
Pairs are typically young women from other parts of
the country or the world who make a contract through an agency
to live in your home for one year.
Parents
who choose this option will need to find new caregivers for
their children every year.
Agencies
which handle au pairs are listed in the yellow pages under
Childcare Centers and Services.
Is
generally convenient and the easiest to access of the potential
childcare solutions. 
Yale School of Medicine