The Guide to Cheap Summer Child Care

Cobbling Care

Wendy Sachs, editor in chief of Care.com, an online resource for care services of all types, aims to simplify what is a surprisingly complex landscape of child care options and costs, knowing that parents, above all, want to ensure that their kids are taken care of during the summer months.

“Most moms are cobbling together activities for the summer: maybe art camp one week, tennis another week, and that makes everything more complicated,” she says.

Sachs gave MainStreet a look at some preliminary results from a survey of 450 parents that Care.com will soon publish to help get a handle on the problem. Among the findings: Moms are stressed out; they are spending more money on summer care than last year; and more than half say that they plan on hiring some sort of caregiver to look after their kids this summer.

With this in mind, we look at parents’ options for camps of all sorts and share some money-saving tips to keep your summer care costs down.

First up: overnight camp.

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Overnight Camp

Generally speaking, overnight camps are where parents should expect to spend the most money on summer child care. It makes sense, since these camps have to provide three squares a day in addition to sleeping, shower and laundry services for the kids.

Melinda Roberts, who runs the ubiquitous MommyBlog from her home in Los Gatos, Calif., is fully aware that her previous full-time job as an executive at a private foundation was what enabled her to send her three children to summer camp. Of course, she is quick to point out that full-time work itself is what made her need that full-time care for her kids when they were out of school.

Roberts tells MainStreet that even though she was able to get a multi-kid discount, sending her three little ones to camp for the 10 weeks of summer still came out to about $3,000 total. When they were younger and had to go to different age-appropriate programs, she remembers spending up to $7,000 on summer arrangements.

“With summer camp you have to either bite the bullet or don't, and deal with the consequences,” she says.

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YMCA/Boy-Scout Camp

For parents whose situation means they need to ensure full-time supervision for their kids, there are some sponsored overnight camps that can represent a cost-effective alternative.

Sachs of Care.com recommends overnight camps run by organizations like the YMCA, the Boy/Girl Scouts, or the local town recreation department.

“Sleepover camps cost a fortune - they have escalated in cost just as college has,” she says. “The Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts or the YMCA are more affordable overnight camps, but they are simpler and may literally mean ‘camping,’ like sleeping in a tent.”

While prices for such camps differ greatly depending on where they are and who is running them, Sachs estimates an average cost of $600 for the whole summer, explaining that such camps cut costs by keeping their activities simple with games like kickball or swimming at the town pool.

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Specialty Camp

Specialty camps, like those for specific sports or activities like music or art, come in many flavors, but their narrow focus often means narrower costs as well.

Sachs explains that “activity-specific camps can also be sleepover camps, and are usually less expensive than general-purpose camps because they only need one type of facility or equipment.”

Because of the variety of lengths and specializations across these camps, it's impossible to quantify the savings, but even $100 goes a long way on a stretched summer budget.

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Religious Camp

A great cost-effective camp alternative for families that attend a local place of worship are the religious-based camps that many faith centers offer to members during the summer. These tend to be subsidized by the group, and offer either overnight or daytime supervision at a good price.

“Before I worked at home, the kids would spend part of the summer with their father, who sent them to the Lutheran church for Bible school in the morning and child care in the afternoon,” Roberts of the MommyBlog recalls, adding that the only charge was the little extra for the camp part of the day.

“They hated the Bible part, but in the afternoon they could go on activities, field trips, which they liked,” she says.

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Day Camp

For parents who are looking to keep a similar schedule to the one their kids follow during the school year, day camps can be a good way to cut out the room and board costs of a sleepover camp, and keep the children occupied.

Of course, depending on the age of the child, different arrangements will require some amount of supervision outside of the camp. Generally, the younger the kids are, the shorter the camp, Sachs explains, since these children need constant supervision and earlier nap times. Kids under five usually go to a half-day camp.

But as Roberts says, “half-day camps are only half-useful if you're working full-time.”

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College Caregivers

Basically, any arrangement that does not include sleeping over means that some degree of extra care may be needed when parents’ work hours extend beyond the 9-to-5 hours of most day camps.

While it may not be cheaper than hiring a full-time nanny (use Care.com’s handy Babysitter Calculator to get an idea of what that might cost in your area), finding a college student to watch your kids while they are home for the summer can definitely get you more bang for your buck.

“A great benefit to having a college caregiver is to avoid the ‘summer slide’,” Sachs explains. “College students definitely bring their education to the table, and they are great because they have a driver's license, they generally can swim, and they're younger and more athletic.”

Sachs has seen this trend grow in recent years and does not see it slowing down any time soon.

“We found in our survey that the expectations of summer care are changing; parents have higher expectations for summer care,” she says. “They want their kids to play outside, go to the pool, go to the park or the beach, throw a ball around and make sure there are activities that can also be educational.”

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Nanny Shares

For those who can’t afford a dedicated sitter for the summer, nanny shares (which can be set up among parents at the local school or via online services like craigslist or care.com) can allow parents to make sure their kids are looked after during the times they need it, but have the nanny attend to another parent’s needs when the kids are away at camp.

“You use it maybe when your nanny is full-time but you don't have as much to occupy them when your kids are at camp and things so you share,” Sachs explains. “It's mainly about retaining your nanny and not paying extra for time when the nanny isn't watching the kids.”

Such arrangements are a win for nannies too, who may have trouble securing a full-time gig when summer activities mean that kids are away some of the time.

The only caveat, Sachs points out, is that “most nannies probably don't want to create a day-care situation, and there are laws in many places governing how many kids a nanny can watch at once.”

She recommends limiting any nanny-share arrangements to three children at once.

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Care Co-Ops

For what Sachs identifies as probably the most cost-effective way to get care during the summer, a care co-op is basically a nanny-share but without the nanny. Instead, a group of parents, all of whom must be able to take a day off from work here and there, share the responsibilities.

“The idea is that you find people with kids in your neighborhood and you're basically trading your hours with other families,” she explains.

Care.com provides a platform for people all over the country to set up and manage a care co-op, but Sachs cautions against entering blindly into such an arrangement with strangers.

“For a co-op to work you have to have people that you have comfort with that match your parenting style and sense of discipline, and you want to make sure the kids are around the same age (maybe within three years of each other) so they can do the same activities,” she says. “Pairing a 10-year-old boy with a three-year-old girl is probably not going to work."

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Friend Camp

Keeping with the idea of pooling resources, trading favors with other parents to occupy the kids in the summer can save a lot of time and money, says Roberts, whose kids have occasionally been invited to vacation with a friend. She is happy to return the favor when she can. It may sound strange, but adding extra kids to the mix can even make some care situations easier.

“It's just as easy to have six kids as it is to have three; it just means you're making more sandwiches,” she says, explaining that “two kids is hard because then they're competing for your attention, but more than that and they entertain themselves.”

If you’re unsure of the etiquette governing such arrangements, Roberts emphasizes that parents be prepared to pay or offer a similar service.

“When I invite a kid, I'm ready to pay all of their expenses, but I will also offer a quid pro quo, where I'll just tell a parent that they can give me their kid for a couple of nights and they can have a date night,” she explains.

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Home Camp

For the lucky few parents out there who can afford to stay home and take care of the kids themselves over the summer, there are plenty of ways to fill that time with cost-effective and stimulating activities. Roberts has had success turning that time at home into a kind of “home camp.”

“This year I'm telling the kids that we're spending the summer at Camp Roberts,” she says. “We're making T-shirts and everything - setting up the camp itself can be a few days of fun activities.”

Instead of trying to find fun things to do in the house, she also recommends buying a season pass to a local attraction to offer some fun alternatives: Last year she bought passes to Great America for $100 each for her and her three kids, and she says it was one of the best ways to spend $400.

“The pass lasts all summer and pays for itself after a couple visits, so it's a good, cheap way to spend a day doing fun activities,” she remembers. “And it comes with parking!”

Of course, getting your money’s worth usually means return visits to the attraction, so it also depends, as Roberts says, on your own “tolerance for waterslides and roller coasters.”

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Camp Discounts

Finally, anyone considering camp for their children need not be locked into paying sticker price. If you call a camp to ask how full it is and it doesn't look like many people are going, the camp may have to cancel, Roberts says. In these cases, she recommends asking for a discount or getting together with another parent to have a better chance at scoring a multi-child discount.

Sachs of Care.com explains that financial aid and scholarships do exist for summer camps for the same reason they do for schools: to ensure diversity or to simply attract new people to the camp. However, she cautions, it's not common.

“The vast majority of camps are privately owned by families and often go back generations - these aren't big corporations,” she says. “[Financial aid] is definitely not a big part of how they operate, but it’s not unheard of.”

As with most money-saving efforts, it never hurts to ask.

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