1.1 Introduction
Child care or day care is the care of a child during the day by a person other than the child’s legal guardians, typically performed by someone outside the child’s immediate family. Day care is typically an ongoing service during specific periods, such as the parents’ time at work. It can also take on a more formal structure, with education, child development, discipline and even preschool education falling into the fold of services (Clancy, (2012).
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Children are heritage of the cord and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hands of the mighty man, so are children of the youth happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them (ps127:3-5) that the African child occupies a strategic position in the family and in the society and in the nation is not an over statement and cannot be underplayed. The child is considered as the life. Wire of the family and the society at large to the extent that any couple that is not blessed with a child is looked upon with pity and sometimes sympathized with. There is the need to know who is a child and what is child care.
In traditional and even contemporary African, various ethic groups have different concepts of who is a child while some ethic groups see one one as a child in so far as she can contribute to the development of the society some other see it in terms of one who has not yet attained the age of initiation into the age grade. Sven in contemporary Nigeria for examples Olukoshi etal (1990) posited that.
There is not one acceptable age, which is considered as a worthy definition of the upper limit of child hood. The age at which a child can become capable in law for his actions or her actions the age at which childhood begins in terms of the right to vote and be voted for and the age considered by the federal ministry of youth and culture and education as being the upper limit of childhood different. Even internationally there are divergent definitions as to who is a child. Whereas the international labour organization and the united nations population division refers to a child as those below 18year of age the 1989 convention on the right of the child states that a child means every human being below the age of 18year. Even though there are divergent opinions and views as to what is the age limit of child it is the views of this author that a child is anybody between births to completion of physiologically/ psychological and physical development. In order words anybody between ages zero of his/her birth to 18years is a child.
Child care in the other hand is a kind of human acts that jeopardizes the physical psychological and the featuring of the child either intentionally or unintentionally child care is characterized on the continuum by sexual care (either cast agreed or by agreement)
- Child labour
- Child smart
- Child self control
- Child honest
- Child dependable
- Child efficient respectable
- Child not as breadwinner
- Child not starving away from home
- Providing a child with food and shelter
- Giving of educational right to a child
- Giving medical assertion of a child
- Avoiding abandonment of a child
- Avoiding child slavery abandonment of a child
- Avoiding child slavery.
Child care is connoted acts of giving basic needs right and deeds of child by parents/ guardians, which will pair the well being of a child. Caring can also take the from of adequate provision of resources for the welfare of the child both now and in future. Also they do not encounter problem of misplacement of vita information or records as a result of services not being available or rendered when needed duplications of effort due to inconsistency in activities and time that is taken in search of file when it is required for processing. Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Computerized Child Care Information System.
1.3 Statement of Problem
The major problem that gave rise to this research project are faced by management and staff of Olinz daycare centre, they include
- Lack of effective database storage system,
- The existing system is characterized by stress, inconvenience and fatigue to the users.
- Duplicate entry or registration of children in the daycare centre which makes it very difficult to track a particular child uniquely
- Poor GUI (graphical user interface) been presented to the end users
- Time delay and consumption in the entire process
- Unauthorized usage and access to important fixed asset records by intruders and impersonators in the ministry
Hence, it has become imperative and necessary for the children management process of the daycare system to be updated.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
This research work is aimed at developing a Child Care Information System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were set out as follows:
- To have a system that will be used to establish an efficient means of managing and tracking children in Daycare.
- To design a system that will contain a reliable database of different children
- To present a system that will enable management and staff of Olinz daycare centre to have proper knowledge of children tracking system.
- To have a system that will be cost effective as regards to children daycare.
- To design a system that would contain a secured database and administrative login.
1.5 Significance of the Study
The software developed will be beneficial to the Children Daycare:
- Maintain a centralized database for children daycare records
- Retrieve previous information on children daycare from the system easily using serial query language
- Have a good surveillance on the children daycare information for security purposes
- Know the number of children registered in a daycare service.
- Track the frequency of a children in daycare.
Besides, the study will serve as reference material for subsequent researcher in the field or related topics.
1.6 Scope of the Study
This research project covers only records about Children Daycare registration, incoming and outgoing time schedule, and the daycare fee payment status. The study focuses mainly on Olinz daycare centre.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials
1.8 Definition of Terms
Database: This is the collection of related data/information
Software: This is the logically written instruction that control the hardware.
