I don’t get many special diet requests unless it’s specific to an allergy.

Most of my inquiries are for part-time care. It’s practically impossible to find two families with differing enough schedules to fill one full-time spot with two part-time spots without them overlapping. I’m in a low-income somewhat rural community. There are head-start programs for ages 3 and up that provide free childcare for at least part of the day for income qualified. If I do get full-time inquiries it’s usually for infants, which I’m limited to 2 under 2 on, so I end up turning them away.

Half of my daycare kids are subsidized, which means I had to provide care for about 7 weeks before I saw a single payment and only get paid monthly now for those children. The county usually finds one way or another not to pay my entire billing so I have to spend additional time after childcare hours preparing invoices for the parents. The only good thing about subsidized care is they did cover the cost of childcare to hold the slots of the parents not working through Coronavirus shutdowns.

It’s disappointing, to say the least. I only make about half of what I figured I could make, which means I probably won’t stay in business as long as I originally planned.

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