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MelissaB 07:04 AM 01-23-2009
My husband and I started a child care business last August with the premise of offering second/third shift care. We were very excited and still are.

However, we've had a lot less interest then we had thought there would be. We have one child who comes and her mom is a nurse. We had a parent who worked third shift for awhile but she ran into money problems and even with state assistance couldn't afford child care anymore so now her family is helping her out. I think that factors in too.

When people look at okay so here is after hours care costs or here is seeing if I can get family to help out. They go towards family. Especially since a lot of family would be available at night since a large group work during the day and those who work at night or some work a retail/fast food job make only minimum wage and that means not much money to be able to afford child care. Its a crazy situation.

We're still offering second and third shift but have just recently opened up to saying we'll take daytime too. However, we're going to limit how many daytime children we take on. Because as someone else mentioned we have a family and don't want to "work" 24 hours a day. We run our child care out of our home and are keeping it small. Thankfully our current after hours child is part time so that will help if we take on days.

I'm sure the economy is also a factor. We had our rates a little higher since well our orignial thought if you work a second/third shift job in a factory you get paid a bit more so in turn care woudl be a bit more. However, we changed that quickly and went back to matching up with the average of the local daytime care around here.

Just wanted to offer what I had found as well. We're in Michigan.
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