Good practice:

Day care Centre Pikku-Äijä (“Little Gaffer”)

The day care centre Pikku-Äijä – built in 2013 and located in Kauhajoki, Finland – promotes small, child-friendly and family-like groups, which enable the children to learn naturally while playing, exploring and expressing themselves artistically. The centre uses a wide variety of different digital solutions in its administration.

Key Objectives
Customers (parents) can connect to early childhood education staff and manage their information easily through the portal; 24/7 availability
Applications to early childhood education, day care and morning / afternoon club
Main Results
Applications to day care centres come mainly through a web portal (99%)
Confirmation and payment instructions are sent back to the parents through the portal
Digital calendar for non-attendance etc. information
Muksunetti – a software designed for early childhood education communication between the staff and parents.

Pikku-Äijä´s full capacity is 126 children. The centre employs 26 experts in pre-school education. Expenses of the digitalization project (software license, broadband, maintenance) are circa €5/child/month. In addition the users needs mobile phones and laptops.

* Applications to day care centres come mainly through a web portal (99%)
* Confirmation and payment instructions are sent back to the parents through the portal
* Digital calendar for non-attendance etc. information
* Muksunetti – a software designed for early childhood education communication between the staff and parents
* Based on the results of the customer satisfaction survey, customers have been very satisfied with the service.

The region is sparsely populated & pre-education services in Kauhajoki needed to develop more user friendly solutions. Excellent broadband connections enabled day care centres in the Suupohja region to create a common web portal where all communication between parents and centres could be done

Good potential: Through digital services information is transferred in real-time. Parents and Guardians can use the service anytime and anywhere (24/7), according to their own schedule. Digital solutions enable administrative tasks to be done with fewer employees, which brings savings. Through the Muksunetti –solution early childhood education is more visible to the families and their participation in school activities has increased.