Providing parents or guardians with childcare enrollment forms is a necessary part of running your business. Ensuring you have collected all the basic information and storing the information in easy-to-access ways helps you welcome students to your program.

Childcare enrollment forms also go beyond collecting basic information: They help you run your center smoothly and provide the best care to the children in your program. You will have opportunities to learn children’s developmental background and their health status. You will also get to know children’s families better and build their confidence in your program.

Keep reading for more details on the different types of enrollment forms and the information you can collect, how downloadable forms or software solutions can help streamline this process, and how they help you and your staff plan for your next group of children.

Table of contents

• Types of enrollment forms
  • Registration forms
  • Developmental and Health history forms
  • Additional consent and release forms
• Prepare better with enrollment information
• Be proactive and follow up
• Use every form to your advantage

Types of enrollment forms

Your childcare enrollment forms should provide the information you need to finalize preparations for your next school year, or enrollment period. Craft your enrollment forms, so they give you a clear picture of what to expect when children arrive. This means thinking carefully about what questions to ask parents in your enrollment forms.

There are three main types of enrollment forms:

Registration forms

The basic registration form includes the child's name, the days they will be attending, and parent or guardian contact information. A registration packet also includes childcare emergency forms to gather emergency contacts and medical information. 

The registration forms should cover: 

• The child’s personal information, such as their date of birth and home address
• The child’s key medical information, including any medications they may need to receive while at the daycare facility or any known allergies
• The parent’s or legal guardian’s personal information, including contact details
• Emergency contact’s personal and contact information
• If applicable, personal and contact on any additional individual who is authorized for pick-up, such as grandparents or a nanny

Be sure to check any regulations for your state on what must be included on enrollment forms –– for example, the state of Wisconsin outlines particulars for children under the age of two. The example forms provided by states are a good starting point when developing your own enrollment forms.

Developmental and Health history forms

Enrollment forms can ask for more than basic information. Consider including other factors that affect how you run your childcare center and prepare for your children. 

For example, in your Developmental and Health history forms, you may include questions such as:

• Questions about the child’s and parents’ medical and development information:
  Were there any complications during the pregnancy or child’s birth? Has the child suffered any significant injuries? How do their motor skills compare to children their age?
• Questions about a child's family background:
  What is the status of the child's parents: married, divorced, widowed, etc.? Do they have siblings? What are their main living arrangements? What languages are spoken at home?
• Questions about a child's emotions and behavior:
  How does the child express frustration? Does the child have any fears that might interrupt their time in childcare (e.g., dogs, sirens)? Have there been any big changes recently that might cause a shift in behavior (e.g., a move, a new sibling, etc.)?
• Questions about the child’s education:
  If applicable, has the child attended a different daycare facility before?

Additional consent and release forms

You can also include other consent and release forms in your enrollment package. Including a permission form to apply sunscreen, or a photography and video permission form, can avoid unnecessary back-and-forth with the parents for separate communications to submit each form. 

Consider adding a section in your enrollment form to include your policies regarding days off, field trips, and the application of sunscreen / diaper cream. This way, you can ask families on the enrollment form to:

• Acknowledge key dates and procedures: You can give parents and guardians key dates, like holiday closures, and key procedures, like pick-up on a half-day, in your enrollment packet. Asking them to sign an acknowledgment of this information can help ensure they read through it promptly.
• Acknowledgment of receipt: Parents and guardians can indicate on enrollment forms that they have received, signed, and/or returned important materials such as facility handbooks and legal forms or releases.
• Additional space: Provide blank space for parents to communicate additional information about their child without a specific prompt.
  
  

Decide what to include based on what makes the most sense for your staff and your childcare center's needs and procedures. For example, if you have a mandatory parent meeting about key dates, you may not need to include key dates on your enrollment forms.
 
To make enrollment forms easy to fill out, consider using a multiple-choice format where possible, instead of an open-question format. Additionally, allow families of enrolled siblings to fill out just one set of forms to reduce redundancies, and ask for updates of previous forms if a child stays enrolled from one session to the next, rather than asking for parents to fill out an additional set of forms.

Prepare better with enrollment information

Not only will the information on the enrollment forms clarify the challenges a new group of children may bring, but it can also set you up for success with your next group of children.

Because the wisdom is (literally) in the details, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. They can take time for you and your staff to handle, especially when the time comes to follow up on applications and make enrollment decisions. Using technology to manage enrollment can reduce this burden. Using a specialized tool to digitally create the registration forms, collect the information, bill a registration fee, and assign children into rooms can streamline this process. This will save you time in the initial stage of data-collection, and will later make follow-ups easier.

With a product such as brightwheel’s fillable documents, you can tailor forms to cover the questions you want to ask, making the process of creating your daycare registration forms easier. It can also help ensure that parents do not submit incomplete forms, since digital forms will notify them when they have not completed all the required fields, preventing unnecessary back-and-forth of the forms until they are properly completed. In addition, the platform will create new contacts as needed, and the information collected will automatically be added to the child’s profile on the platform.

Keeping your applications and enrollment data in one place can also make it easier to manage admissions pipeline, or waitlists, and forecast your availability or hiring needs. With brightwheel’s childcare management software, you can easily run a report that shows your enrollment numbers based on the current age of children in your care, and you can also determine what your enrollment will look like based on the age of the children at any future date.

Whether you use an enrollment software or not, organizing the information on your enrollment forms so it's easy to find when you need it is quality preparation for your upcoming group of children.

Be proactive and follow up

In the course of going over your enrollment form data, you may find that there are questions that keep bubbling up beyond what you have asked. If you frequently want to follow up with several of the same sorts of questions, consider adding them to your enrollment form in the future.

But don't wait if you think you need the information sooner. Following up with parents within the first week or so of childcare will emphasize that you want to set their child up for success and will help you to do so. If you need to ask the same question of multiple people, sending out a short email survey can be a quick and easy way to gather additional information. Or, easily request additional information from parents with an app like brightwheel, for example, with a digital drop-off form they fill out when bringing their child to childcare.

Keeping the information you receive in enrollment forms can make the re-enrollment process easier for parents as well. If children are continuously enrolled, requiring a simple signature after a parent has reviewed and updated their information can be all you need.

Lastly, you can also be proactive about your enrollment forms. If there were questions on the form that didn't provide any information you used either day-to-day or administratively, take them off.

Use every form to your advantage

There is no single be-all-end-all to enrollment forms. After you have basic enrollment information (name, age, etc.), you'll need to compile your own set of questions that works to your advantage. Tailor your forms to help build relationships with parents without overloading them with a stack of paperwork.

Additionally, your staff will benefit from having the exact information they need to start off right. More than just names and number of children, enrollment forms can provide staff with a wealth of background knowledge that will help as they are getting to know the new faces in your program. 

Take a critical eye to your enrollment forms at least once a year to tweak them. Communicate early with parents and don't be afraid to follow up. And look at the information parents give you closely to build a more complete picture of your incoming children.

Brightwheel is the complete solution for early education providers, enabling you to streamline your center’s operations and build a stand-out reputation. Brightwheel connects the most critical aspects of running your center—including sign in and out, parent communications, tuition billing, and licensing and compliance—in one easy-to-use tool, along with providing best-in-class customer support and coaching. Brightwheel is trusted by thousands of early education centers and millions of parents. Learn more at mybrightwheel.com.