Earning (and growing) Trust With Parents

When parents leave their children in your care, they’re instilling a huge amount of trust in you to keep their little ones safe and happy. With this in mind, it also helps if you make an effort on your part to help them feel at ease when they drop their child off.

Developing a positive relationship with the families and children at your childcare is the foundation for building trust with parents, guardians and carers. But how can you establish a productive relationship with so many different families and children? We’ve pulled together our top 10 tips to help you develop a trusted connection with the parents at your childcare.

Why it’s important to build a positive relationship with parents

Building a trusting, positive relationship with the families and parents at your childcare is important on so many levels. 

Both families and educators alike have a unique understanding of the child. Families, parents and caregivers can give insight into how a child behaves outside of their care and learning environment. Alternatively, educators and childcare workers are able to share how a child behaves and learns within a group environment and individually. 

A positive relationship between parents or families and childcare educators can help to strengthen a child’s emotional wellbeing. By actively demonstrating that the parents trust the educators it’s essentially showing children that they can also depend on them. 

Children often excel academically when there’s coherence between the childcare program and their at-home learning. This is why it pays to have open, two-way communication between families and childcare educators so both parties can help to support each other both at home and while they’re in care. 

Children learn from watching others, so if they’re shown how to establish and maintain positive, trusting relationships they’re more likely to mirror this behaviour themselves.   

10 tips for developing trust with parents

While there are a number of different ways to develop trust with parents, here are 10 effective ways to develop a positive relationship with the families that attend your childcare.

Communicate with parents regularly

Effective communication is the basis for any trusting relationship, particularly when you’re trying to build trust and establish confidence with the parents at your childcare. This means communicating with them on a regular basis and reporting their child’s achievements as well as their challenges.

In addition to communicating with the parents on a one-on-one basis, it can also be a great idea to set up a noticeboard at your facility that displays pictures of the children and information on what activities they’ve been doing. You could also put this into a newsletter or dedicate a section of your website to regular updates about the children.

Encourage parents to reach out

While it’s important for you to communicate with the parents, it’s equally important to encourage them to reach out should they need to get in touch. Two-way communication is essential for fostering the child’s cognitive and social development while they’re in your care and outside of the program. If the parents are experiencing any difficulties at home they’ll be able to alert you to these challenges so you can help support their child while they’re in your care.   

Get to know the parents

While it’s likely that you’re dealing with a number of different children and families on a regular basis, it’s well worth taking the time to get to know the parents early on in the piece so that you can provide the best care for their child. Take your time to understand their culture, views, expectations and anything else that might impact how you support their child while they’re with you. During this time you can also share your own expectations in terms of parent’s involvement while taking care to respect their boundaries. 

Be honest

When it comes to parents and their children, there’s no doubt that they would prefer to know exactly what happens while they’re in your care, whether it’s good or bad. Hiding the truth from parents is a quick way to lose their confidence and trust in your abilities. Although it may be difficult at times, it’s always best to be upfront and honest when it comes to their child. This also helps to demonstrate your commitment to providing open and transparent communication.

Provide daily reports and updates

A great way to maintain communication with parents and families is to provide them with a daily report of what their child did while they were in your care. From the activities they participated in to how they were feeling that day and even what they ate and when they napped, detailing the day can help the parents to fill in the blanks on their end.

Encourage parents to provide feedback

Working in childcare, it’s important to constantly seek feedback from parents as to ways you can improve your service and create the best experience for their child while in your care. While it’s essential to encourage feedback, it’s even more important to make sure that you’re taking the feedback on board to make changes and improvements. Don’t be afraid to let the parents know what adjustments you’ve made in response to their feedback. If they’ve taken the time to provide you with suggestions it’s only fair to disclose how their comments have been addressed. 

Address concerns in a timely manner

When working with families and children, there will be times when parents express concern about their child’s behaviour or performance while in your care. Although times like these can be stressful, it’s also a great opportunity to take the time to understand the parent’s concerns and address them promptly. Having established two-way communication with the parents and families can help you both to find a solution that works for both parties.

Use multiple communication channels

While communication is important, so are the methods you use to stay in touch with parents. Pick-up and drop-off times can be a great opportunity to quickly touch base with the families but it shouldn’t be the only channel of communication. Daily reports, noticeboards or newsletters, phone calls, emails and text messages can all be used to establish effective communication. Or if you’ve sought the parents preferred means of communication, make sure to honour their wishes and stick to that method.

Get the parents involved in programming and planning

Invite parents to provide input into the programming and planning for their child. This can help them to feel more involved in their child's progress while also helping them to develop a better understanding of the childcare program and activities.

Host social events

It’s not often that you manage to get all the parents and educators in one place at the same time but organising social events throughout the year can be a great way to bring the childcare community together. This gives other parents the opportunity to get to know each other as well as the other childcare educators.

Building trust and positive relationships with parents is vital. Not only can it help you to further improve your service but it also helps to provide the children in your care with the best experience possible.