Five Ways ParentZone Can Improve Your Nursery’s Parental Communications
Establishing a solid relationship with the parents and guardians of children attending an early years setting is integral to the success of all nurseries, and brings multiple benefits to all involved parties.
Investing in the right technology can help facilitate these relationships and improve communication — helping to seamlessly bridge the gap between parents and practitioners.
ParentZone is our award-winning smartphone app for parents which enables them to easily access information about their child’s day, at a time that suits them best.
Designed to empower nursery staff and delight parents, ParentZone is a useful platform that effectively engages everyone involved. Read on to discover five ways in which ParentZone can improve your parental communications…
1. Share real-time updates
ParentZone enables parents to be involved with their child’s learning and development, wherever they are.
From important developmental milestones to the smaller, everyday achievements — the app lets parents access real-time snapshots of their child’s key moments, as well as pictures and videos. This provides busy parents with an insight into their child’s day and lets them see what they are up to, helping them to feel involved and stay connected regardless of their location.
2. Foster trust and build meaningful relationships
Maintaining an active line of communication between practitioners and parents plays a pivotal role in fostering mutual trust and understanding.
Trust is the foundation on which the parental and nursery relationship is built, helping to ease parents’ minds and reassure them that their child is being looked after in a safe environment.
Regularly sharing snapshots and updates of a child’s day can alleviate any concerns they might have, and demonstrates that you’re putting care and compassion into practice. This can make a parent feel more comfortable and help nursery employees establish meaningful and genuine relationships not only with the children under their care — but also with the parents and guardians.
3. Increase engagement and inspire creativity
Children never stop learning — so it’s important that they remain engaged with education outside the immediate nursery environment.
ParentZone supports learning and development at home with ParentHub – an online resource portal offering tips, advice and ideas for parents and their children. Featuring activity and craft ideas, child-friendly recipes and EYFS learning, this portal equips parents with the key tools, resources and information needed to create a fun learning environment at home.
The portal even includes a BBC Bitesize integration, which provides advice on all aspects of a child’s development, covering topics such as creating a bedtime routine and tips for starting primary school.
It’s a great way to proactively involve a child’s guardian in the learning process, all while helping to ensure that the topics and themes explored in the nursery environment are reaffirmed at home.
4. Reduce Paperwork
Paper is a precious nursery resource that shouldn’t be used for admin work.
As well as being unsustainable, it’s also inherently impractical — paper documents are easily lost, damaged or used incorrectly, which over time can lead to inaccuracies and data gaps. ParentZone addresses this issue as it digitises the nursery experience, helping parents engage with the necessary administrative side of an early years setting.
For example, the ParentZone app facilitates a digital drop off/pick up, where families can quickly check their child in or out from the app. This makes it easier for busy parents to balance the school run with work commitments, as it removes the need to fill in unnecessary and tenuous paperwork.
5. Easily invoice and receive payments
Sick of chasing up late payments or struggling to stay up to date with your finances?
The admin time associated with sending invoices and receiving payments can be a real challenge for nursery managers – often eating into precious time that could be focused elsewhere in the business.
ParentZone is an effective solution to this, as it has the capability for parents to access their finances via the app. Here they can view their invoices and outstanding balance so they are aware of what they owe and send payments directly to your nursery. These can be made via card or phone – with payments being processed on the same day and reaching your account on the following day.
All payments are secure and also have the benefit of being automatically reconciled against the bill —reducing your admin time by up to 80% (compared to Direct Debit and cash).
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About the Author
Marketing Executive at Connect Childcare
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