How Does June Care Differ from Traditional Childcare
Offering a flexible, accessible solution, June Care is changing the childcare landscape
Navigating the childcare landscape as a parent can be extremely difficult. And weighing your childcare options as a parent is overwhelming. To help, we did a comparison between June Care and traditional childcare centers to take the guesswork out of making the right choice for you and your family.
June Care is a personalized family matching service which connects parents who need childcare with qualified and vetted June Care host parents who can care for their kids. All June Care providers are parents or caregivers and the providers' children are present during the care (like a paid playdate).
Daycare or “Child Care Facility” or “Child Daycare Facility” means any licensed location (either in-home or in a commercial facility) that provides non-medical care and supervision to children from multiple families at one time. In the U.S., there are about 130,000 daycare centers currently but many have shut down during the pandemic. In fact, 51% of American families do not have access to the childcare they need, and the gap is only getting worse.
We compared June Care vs Daycare Centers across 10 different criteria (a summary comparison chart can be found at the end of this article).
Trust & Safety.
June Care (SUPER SAFE): 100% of June Care providers are vetted using better-than-best-in-class screening practices. This includes background checks, driving checks (as applicable), reference checks, onboarding interviews, home screens, internet presence checks and a parent check. In addition to the screening, our care providers are also parents (typically stay-at-home moms) so their “mom instinct” runs strong and ensures everything runs smoothly and SAFEly. The June Care vetting team is made up of parents, too, and our rule of thumb is that we will only match families with June Care hosts who we would also feel comfortable watching our own children.
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Daycare (SAFE): Daycare Centers typically do well when it comes to environmental and structural safety for your children (thanks to licensing and regulatory requirements). However, the safety checks can be far apart and do not always screen for daycare staff / workers who come in and out of the center, in which case you need to rely on your daycare Director to ensure they are running the appropriate background and other personnel safety checks.
Quality Control & Provider to Child Ratio
June Care (High Quality, Always / Low Provider:Child Ratio): In the June Care model, June Care Providers are parents who are typically stay-at-home moms. This fact alone already ensures a certain level of quality for childcare from a loving mom who is focused on caring for children. In addition to being professional moms, 96% of our providers also have professional childcare experience. Additionally, June Care only matches families 1:1. This keeps your care provider to child ratio super small, which allows for deep and personal connections between your June Care provider and your children, as well as increased attention and support for your child (vs. a daycare setting). With June Care whether you are booking the same host, or a new host, you know you will always get a premium childcare experience for you and your family.
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Daycare (Quality Varies / High Provider:Child Ratio): Daycare centers cater to larger groups of families and children so their ability to customize schedules, curriculum and activities are limited. While it’s always possible to add extra-curricular activities to your child’s schedule, this comes at an additional cost and time commitment. Many daycare centers have a 1:10-12 Provider:Child ratio in their centers. Because of these higher ratios, the daycare centers need to operate more like a school classroom, which decreases the level of attention and support your child may receive.
Social Emotional Support & Socialization
June Care (Super Social / Highly Supported): Core to the June Care model is that the care is provided by a parent who is concurrently providing care to her own children. This means that, in addition to childcare, your children are also getting a playdate (a.k.a. socialization). Coming out of the pandemic, parents are more aware of the need for their children to be socialized than ever before. Along with learning basic social skills, early socialization for children has also been shown to accelerate verbal and language development and improve overall self-confidence in children. Through your June Care match, your child will make early friendships and learn valuable social and emotional skills.
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Daycare (Super Social / Limited Support): In a Daycare center, your children are likely to spend their days with many other children of similar age. This presents many opportunities for your children to navigate social relationships and build early social emotional skills. The only potential downside, of course, is the high ratio of children to childcare providers, which may limit your provider’s ability to carefully coach and navigate social situations for your child as they arise.
Accessibility
June Care (Large, Local Supply of Care). June Care taps into the care work that is already happening in millions of homes across the country. The service helps stay-at-home parents get paid while parenting and helps working parents get access to childcare.
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Daycare (Scarce Care Resource). With 130,000 care centers… for millions of families, there isn’t enough childcare to go around. This drives up the cost of each childcare seat (due to simple supply / demand economics) and leaves most families in a pinch without access to reliable care.
Flexible
June Care (Flexible). June Care is the first childcare solution that actually works for families… because it’s built on the foundation of family life. June Care matches are on demand and flexible with no long-term commitments. Childcare needs have changed dramatically over the last two years. Many families no longer need Monday - Friday, 9AM - 5PM (or “full time”) schedules. All parents know that, as your families grow, your needs change and evolve and June Care is designed to evolve with you.
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Daycare (Full Time Prioritized). Due to constrained supply, Daycares must prioritize full time, long-term seats within their centers. They rely on committed income in order to set up and run sustainable businesses, which have increasingly high costs. This is great for families who need the full time schedules, but harder for families who have / want more of a flex schedule and don’t want to pay for childcare they aren’t using.
Customizable
June Care (Highly Customizable): When you submit a childcare request with June Care you tell us exactly what you are looking for and our matching algorithm and team help you find the perfect match for your preferences and parenting style. Additionally, because of our growing network of hosts, we can even help you match with a variety of local hosts throughout your week if you are interested in your child gaining different experiences on different days. So whether you want a lot of time outside, crafting, learning Spanish, or playing sports, we aim to find you the experience you and your family are looking for.
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Daycare (Not Customizable): Daycare centers cater to larger groups of families and childcare so their ability to customize schedules, curriculum and activities are limited. While it’s always possible to add extra-curricular activities to your child’s schedule, this comes at an additional cost and time commitment.
Family / Community Support
Support and community are essential in the world we’re living in. With June Care (unlike other models), we rely on the human connection and the coming together of families everywhere to appreciate the work happening in the home and outside of it so that everyone can achieve their highest potential. June Care is moms supporting moms in their most important work.
We hope this helps to explain how June Care works as a new, community-based approach to childcare and how it compares to other, more traditional models. We also want to invite you to check out, and try out June Care soon! We are currently serving families across California and looking forward to expanding across the country soon!
