Over the years I have had several children with special needs. In fact I pride myself in always trying to have one or two children with special needs enrolled, usually Aspergers or Autism. Along time ago when I ran my contract by my lawyer, he suggested I word my contract, that my rates are based on the needs of each child/family. Same as the contract has custom hours to meet the families daycare needs, the rate is a custom rate based on the hours/days/ and needs of the child. Also in my contract, I have that at anytime the rates are subject to change based on me meeting the needs of the child, if the parents dont agree then they have the option to give two weeks notice and find other care. My rates are not based on the disability itself, but the needs of the child. I am totally up front with my parents about this. In my experience when you are up front with parents and communicative with parents who have children that have special needs whether it be a disability or not, they are very receptive as long as they dont see you as just trying to nickle and dime them. To justify the rate increase you have to provide examples of the extra time spent.

I have charged more on screaming infant, a child that isn't potty trained, and a child that increased their time at daycare because they required more attention than my base rate, same as I might consider raising the rate for someone that required special monitoring whether they had a qualified "disability". But you can't just have a "disability rate".

My opinion for this case is either you do as a previous poster suggested and get an additional assistant and charge the parents more, just let it go, or change everyones rates to those based on needs.

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