Kids U is a Canadian childcare organisation raising the bar for discerning parents with its unique education programme designed to both nurture and stimulate young minds.
Formed in 2012 on the premise of creating future leaders through brain research, they believe the combination of continuous loving care and enriching daily experiences best supports children to build a strong foundation for future learning.
The organisation now employs 300 staff to deliver its successful program to more than 1000 students across 10 centres in Alberta and Saskatchewan. They also provide professional development and consulting for a number of US childcare centres.
Here’s how 1Place Childcare compliance software is helping the organisation standardise processes, speed up procedures and continue to keep children safe through the Covid-19 pandemic:
Compliance software keeps health and safety paramount
A primary goal at Kids U is for children to feel safe and secure. As such, providing their young learners with a safe and healthy learning environment has been a priority well before Covid struck.
Kids U co-owner and CFO Faisal Alimohd says they began using 1Place Childcare software in 2019 to standardise processes across the rapidly-growing organisation.
“We realized we needed a solution that would foundationally give us eyes and accountability across all of our campuses.
“The theoretical value of 1Place was significant. If people followed the process, the software could be extremely powerful,” he says.
They began using the online compliance software to replace paper opening and closing checks “that weren’t always passed on or documented”. These were followed by incident reports, cleaning, and ‘programme supervisor delegation’ checklists.
Faisal says 1Place has allowed Kids U to review their causal processes, streamline and automate them into checklists.
“For us, in terms of licencing, there’s things not getting lost.”
Now, thanks to 1Place’s automated reporting, Faisal can identify trends and drill down to specific campus classrooms, which is data Faisal has never seen before.
Incident trends, for example, can be flagged and quickly actioned with the relevant campuses and teachers.
Adaptive 1Place software a ‘game changer’ in Covid response
Kids U reopened during the Covid-19 pandemic faced with increasing regulatory requirements and a cumbersome paper-based drop off process taking up to 10 minutes per family.
The risk ramifications of misplacing parent-signed health-check sheets was too high for Faisal, and he soon turned to 1Place Childcare to bring the questionnaire into the app.
Now, a comprehensive digital health questionnaire allows parents to scan a unique QR code to complete the questions ahead of time.
Drop offs now involve a quick temperature check and digital signature, taking no more than two minutes.
Going digital with 1Place Childcare means Kids U can quickly adapt the questions as regulations change. While not required, Kids U also chooses to keep a record of every temperature check as an added level of safety.
“It’s allowed us to centralise our data so we can go back to it if we need to. There’s already been one occasion where we had to go back and check a temperature in the system and were able to easily.”
Faisal says 1Place has made the drop off process “so much easier” for parents, and teachers too.
“Our teachers happily use the software because they know doing it on paper is much harder,” he says.
Digital childcare compliance like an insurance policy
Faisal admits integrating 1Place across the organization took some time due to staff changes but, since Covid, everyone has wholeheartedly embraced the software
“Before we had 1Place I can understand why people would forget to carry out every check and task. Now they are required to sign off at the same time so it’s instantly verifiable.”
While they haven’t seen a financial benefit yet, Faisal believes 1Place, in essence, is a form of proactive cost avoidance.
“I see it as an insurance policy that allows us to keep everyone accountable, and it means our families can receive the same level of service and care no matter who’s in charge.”