NAFCC and Minute Menu Systems Team to Promote Quality and Professionalism in Family Child Care

March 17, 2009 - PRLog -- Richardson, Texas –   Each and every weekday, over a million of America’s children receive child care from one of over 250,000 family child care providers across the United States.  The National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to promoting quality child care by strengthening the profession of family child care, has worked for years to help these caregivers offer the highest quality of care to the next generation of Americans.  Minute Menu Systems, the leading provider of quality, low-cost business management software for family child care providers, has now partnered with NAFCC to further promote this mission.

Minute Menu offers Minute Menu Kids, an on-line software system that helps child care providers plan activities designed to spur child development, plan nutritious meals, prepare their taxes as home-based businesses, help parents pay via automated direct deposit, and give parents daily or weekly reports on the status of their children.  Now, Minute Menu will also encourage existing users to join the NAFCC for ongoing professional development – including help pursuing a Child Development Associates degree.  Additionally, NAFCC is able to offer Minute Menu Kids at a discount to all of its members.   By raising awareness of the tools available to family child care providers for professional development and business management, these two agencies hope their partnership will improve the quality child care in the US.

The potential impact of this partnership on the larger child care community is considerable.  The National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) is the national leader of a network of state and local associations that work across the country to promote quality family child care by giving child care providers access to educational and professional resources and by providing the opportunity for independent accreditation—a key indicator for parents of quality child care.  Through its own national membership and via special relationships with the many regional and local associations, the NAFCC agenda reaches thousands of providers around the United States.  Minute Menu’s software is currently in use by more than 100,000 family child care providers around the country for daily recordkeeping.  

“We’re not aware of any previous partnership between technology and advocacy that has the potential scale of this agreement,” said Natalie Clark, Chief Financial Officer for Minute Menu Systems.  “It’s possible that, through the combined efforts of NAFCC and Minute Menu, we’ll reach more than half of all the family child care homes in the US, with the goal of helping them improve the quality of care for the children in those homes.”

Through this partnership, NAFCC members receive a 10% discount on subscriptions to the Minute Menu Kids Pro child care business management software—which was designed by child care experts to specifically meet the needs of family child care providers.  Additionally, Minute Menu will be adding NAFCC-specific resources for providers within its Minute Menu Kids software.  Minute Menu will also provide sponsorship for the 19th Annual NAFCC conference “Defining New Horizons: Charting a Course to Quality Early Learning” to be held June 25-27, 2009, in Baltimore, Maryland.  

About Minute Menu Systems, LLC:  Minute Menu Systems provides software solutions to meet the business management and Food Program needs of all aspects of the child care community.  Over 100,000 child care providers use Minute Menu products each month to track and report Child and Adult Care Food Program reimbursement data to sponsors and state agencies.  Currently Minute Menu has nearly 300 sponsors in over 40 states using the Minute Menu HX software to facilitate monthly provider claims.  Minute Menu also offers the only comprehensive software made specifically for family child care providers, Minute Menu Kids Pro. Minute Menu is based out of Richardson, Texas.  For more information, visit www.minutemenukids.com.

About NAFCC:  The National Association for Family Child Care is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting quality child care by strengthening the profession of family child care.  For over 25 years, the NAFCC has worked to achieve this goal by offering high quality training and educational experiences, leadership and networking opportunities, and NAFCC accreditation. For more information, visit www.nafcc.org.

# # #

Minute Menu Systems provides software solutions to meet the business management and Food Program needs of all aspects of the child care community.