A child care counselor is responsible for creating a safe and healthy environment for children in schools, group homes, and daycares. Usually, they work with children with behavioral, mental, and physical issues, ensuring that these children receive the support that they need, especially in between child counseling appointments.
One major task of a child care counselor is to monitor children's development by keeping records of their physical, mental, emotional, and social development. They share these records with other specialists as well as the children's guardians to maximize growth and development. Moreover, a child care counselor creates and implements daily schedules for children that include learning plans, play dates, and other activities that aim to support developmental goals.
An aspiring child care counselor must have at least a bachelor's degree in early childhood education, child care, social work, or other related fields. Depending on their employer, a child care counselor may also require additional training, as well as CPR and AED certifications.
To increase the chances of job placement, a child care counselor should also have experience in child care, time management skills, communication skills, and a patient and caring personality.
How to Become a Child Care Counselor
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a child care counselor. For example, did you know that they make an average of $16.89 an hour? That's $35,121 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 11% and produce 81,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Child Care Counselor Do
There are certain skills that many child care counselors have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed emotional skills, organizational skills and problem-solving skills.
How To Become a Child Care Counselor
If you're interested in becoming a child care counselor, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 62.1% of child care counselors have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 8.5% of child care counselors have master's degrees. Even though most child care counselors have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a child care counselor. When we researched the most common majors for a child care counselor, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on child care counselor resumes include high school diploma degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a child care counselor. In fact, many child care counselor jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many child care counselors also have previous career experience in roles such as sales associate or cashier.
Child Care Counselor Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of counselor you might progress to a role such as therapist eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title case manager.
Average Salary for a Child Care Counselor
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for Child Care Counselors
1. SUNY at Albany
Albany, NY • Private
2. California State University - Long Beach
Long Beach, CA • Private
3. SUNY at Binghamton
Vestal, NY • Private
4. Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA • Private
5. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
6. Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA • Private
7. Hunter College of the City University of New York
New York, NY • Private
8. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI • Private
9. University of Maryland - College Park
College Park, MD • Private
10. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Private
Top Skills For a Child Care Counselor
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 15.0% of child care counselors listed cpr on their resume, but soft skills such as emotional skills and organizational skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Child Care Counselor Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Child Care Counselor templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Child Care Counselor resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Child Care Counselor Demographics
Child Care Counselor Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among child care counselors, 65.6% of them are women, while 34.4% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among child care counselors is White, which makes up 65.9% of all child care counselors.
- The most common foreign language among child care counselors is Spanish at 69.7%.
Online Courses For Child Care Counselor That You May Like
This course starts you on your journey of integrating primary palliative care into your daily lives. You will learn what palliative care is, how to communicate with patients, show empathy, and practice difficult conversations. You will learn how to screen for distress and provide psychosocial support. You will learn about goals of care and advance care planning and how to improve your success with having these conversations with patients. Finally, you will explore important cultural consideratio...
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Recent studies indicate that the prevalence rate of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has risen dramatically over the past decades and a likely trend of continual global surge in autistic child patients. Children with ASD have oral sensitivities and daily oral hygiene management could be difficult. In caring for autistic children, it is essential to understand the unique behaviors and other possible comorbid conditions and in particular, to gain the confidence and cooperation of the patient before...
Best States For a Child Care Counselor
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a child care counselor. The best states for people in this position are New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and New Mexico. Child care counselors make the most in New Jersey with an average salary of $53,004. Whereas in New York and Maryland, they would average $45,680 and $44,143, respectively. While child care counselors would only make an average of $44,096 in New Mexico, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. New Jersey
$53,004
Avg. Salary
2. New York
$45,680
Avg. Salary
3. North Dakota
$42,376
Avg. Salary
How Do Child Care Counselor Rate Their Jobs?
Top Child Care Counselor Employers
Most Common Employers For Child Care Counselor
| Rank  | Company  | Average Salary  | Hourly Rate  | Job Openings  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington State University | $42,601 | $20.48 | 9 |
| 2 | General Atomics | $38,287 | $18.41 | 9 |
| 3 | St Ann’s School | $35,604 | $17.12 | 46 |
| 4 | Harborcreek Youth Services | $35,121 | $16.89 | 46 |
| 5 | KYJO Enterprises | $35,121 | $16.89 | 25 |
| 6 | Bonnie Brae | $35,121 | $16.89 | 22 |
| 7 | WCYA | $35,121 | $16.89 | 19 |
| 8 | Lutheran Social Services of New York | $35,121 | $16.89 | 18 |
| 9 | Koinonia | $35,121 | $16.89 | 10 |
| 10 | League School of Greater Boston | $35,121 | $16.89 | 8 |
Child Care Counselor Videos
