Paying for Sick days

This is indeed a quite usual practice unfortunately. You are not paying for the service itself, you are paying for the reserved slot as the service was reserved for your child and not available for another child.Doing it this way enables child care poviders to create a budget based on the number of children they watch and pay for the appropriate staff, meals for the children, toys and other supplies. if this is a serious issue for you, I would look for a centre who only charges for the actual day your chid is there, such as a smaller home provider, as many home providers do not charge for off days.