Has anyone used a Nanny type service to vet people through?

[PhotoJunkie]

As it turns out my sister is now saying she will not be able to help me with "babysitting" issues with my daughter.  The hope was that she and her husband would be able to keep my daughter during the three days a week I have to work 12 hour shifts.  After todays counseling session, she made it very clear she would not be willing to do so.  So now I have to look into some kind of back up plan to have someone stay with my daughter on the three days( actually nights) I work.  I know nobody in the area other than my sister.  I have not lived there before and won't have enough time to make contacts etc with other mothers for a while. 

 

Has anyone here had to use a non family member/non friend to help provide supervision for their kids while at work?  How do you go about finding people like this?  Im a nurse so my shifts are nights, 12 hours 3 days a week.  My sister did say she could cover some but refused to give a specific answer as to how much.  She seems to think this is something we decide on a day to day basis and that isn't doable.  I can't just call in to work if my sister decides she can't help that day. 

 

any ideas would be fabulous.  Thank you

 

Lynn

[Guest TooSoon]

Do you live near a college?  A responsible college student might be a good option.  You could try calling and seeing if there is a student newsletter (we have a daily one for both students and faculty) where you could post a job?  Plus, you could vet this individual through the school.  I babysat all the time in college.  College students will cost much less than some of the other options. 

 

Also, I once called a church in my neighborhood to see if there were any retired older church members who could watch my infant daughter.  There were a ton, though I found another option in the end. 

 

Good luck! 

[smabify]

I like @TooSoon's answers.  I know the university near us has people constantly looking for jobs - even ones overnight - and some of the students in social work and even nursing students can use these as volunteer hours.  Plus, students keep crazy schedules, so most don't mind overnight things. 

 

Church groups are great.  Some youth groups will do this, or, in our Church, many members have police clearance checks saying they can babysit.

 

Another option is to look at housing situations.  One of the people that lived near me was a single mother and a night shift nurse, and she arranged to find a condo where the neighbour would stay with her chickadee until around 10:30 (when said chick was sleeping), and then leave for the night.  She also had one of those alarm systems that would tell her every time a door or window opened unexpectedly.  (for the record, I find those systems creepy, but I can see the purpose of one if you have a troublesome teen)

 

 

[canadiangirl]

PJ, I also hope you can find a responsible college student, given your daughter's age.  When I was in university, I was asked to stay for a week with a family of two teens- the parents were going away and the two teens were staying behind.  The last time they had been left on their own they had a huge party with damage to the house.  I was just there to keep the peace and curfews without being a complete millstone around the neck of the teens.  They resented me being there but I was able to remain unobtrusive.  And I got paid.  I did also serve as designated driver and picked them up from a party; the deal was they could call at any time and I would not grumble but they must call.

 

Maybe you can find a really good female role model who your daughter will like- she could be part of the interview, help you vet people, set it up -and perhaps then your sister will see there are also other good eggs out there (can't believe she has gone from wanting 5 days a week to none!).  The key if it's a college student would be making enforcement of certain rules incumbent on the college student in a contract of some sort -otherwise there may be temptation in that age group to be more flexible than maybe you would like. 

[RobFTC]

PJ, that just sucks.  I should not say more.

 

I use care.com.  They screen decently well, and the fee for the site is well worth it.  The best way is to figure out your needs and post a job offer, then screen the people who respond to make sure they are good and can really do it.

 

In the past, Michelle put up postings at the local university, and that was OK but more work.

 

Take care,

Rob T

[Kealoha]

Hugs, PJ. 

 

+1 on Rob's care.com recommendation.  I liked the background check feature and saw a number of college/nursing students with profiles on there too.  Also as a bonus some will also do light housework or cooking or grocery shopping (says on their profile).  If you google a little bit they often have discount codes for your first month or so. http://www.retailmenot.com/view/care.com

 

Also, if you are on facebook, can you join a local parents fb group for your area?  i found that there were a lot of good recommendations re local babysitters and you can also cross reference this with care.com.

 

Hope you find someone who can be part of your "village".

[Guest TooSoon]

I had another thought.  I am not sure where you are but we are in a small school district and there is an after care program my daughter attends after school.  It is run by the county but the women who work for the program are mostly women in their late 50s- early 60s, retired teachers and school aides.  You might check in with the district to see if anyone affiliated with such a program, if there is one, might be interested in such a position or might know someone qualified.  We are in the 'burbs and there are a lot of widowed women in that age range who are simply looking for ways to keep busy and vital. 

[PhotoJunkie]

Thank you everyone.  I am looking at options given and liked what I found on the care.com site.  They even had options for college students.  I will be looking at them more closely once I understand what I will be doing.  I am going to plan as if I don't have family in the area to fall back on at this point.  Seems like every time I try to rely on family they bail out and I'm left stranded. 

 

There is a thought burning in the back of my head and Im not sure quite how to get it to a point where I can tell if it will actually work, but it is possible that with my husbands small retirement stipend and with getting the girls social security check back when I move, its possible that if Im VERY VERY careful with money, I could take two years off from working and go to school for my masters degree in nursing.  I would be home with the girl every day after school, wouldn't need a full time caregiver for her, not end up being stuck in a job I hate that does nothing for where I want to end up.

 

However, it would mean a completely different way of how we live.  Things like movies, iTunes, amazon/kindle, fun trips, eating out etc would all be very rare treats at that point.  The houses are much cheaper there, food prices are much cheaper there, and Im not driving 2 hours a day in a gas guzzling truck.  insurance/registration are all much cheaper (I've checked lol) I could keep my nursing license current because they don't require continuing education points, you just pay the renewal fee and off you go.  I would still have to keep internet for school etc, but we could live without cable etc.  I only need to watch football now that I have netflix

 

Like I said, its an idea percolating at the moment.  Downsides?  I would have to stay here until this house sells.  which seems like it might not take much to do.  That way Im not floating two house payments on this idea.  I might have to rent as opposed to purchasing a home, which at that point I would look into a Condo since I found them to be within the payment I wanted to be around with a house.  Right now mortgage companies are requiring a letter of employment before letting me close on a home out there, but that was before we figured I would have the social security check back. 

 

I know Im babbling at this point but it helps me to get ideas out on paper to see it in a somewhat organized form.  I would love to hear any ideas on if this is a good plan or not lol. 

 

Thanks so much guys!  It helps to have back up

 

 

[Captains wife]

It would be great if you could stay home with your girls, if the financial strain isn't too great. I wish I could be home more with my young son. For me personally, financially stability is VERY important to me and there are certain things I want to do in life including sending my son to private school for high school and to pay for his university. I also want to have a decent retirement so I work 4 days a week, 12 hours a day with my commute. So I am away from son a lot (although I get to work from home one of those days so I can at least see him while he is being take of by our nanny). So you might also want to think about the future financially as well but cutting back on current expenditures is also not a bad thing if you can make this work now !

 

Regarding a nanny, I have a full time woman working for me who also helps with the housework. I originally went through a nanny agency but the downside here is you can pay more and there are a lot of restrictions. My mother actually found our nanny through a local newspaper and we did a credit and criminal check + background check on her. I have also used Care.com as back up but make sure that anyone you are interested in has a background, criminal check. Also, I found some of the caregivers on there a little unreliable but its overall a great service to use as a resource. Depending on the age of your kids, I would recommend an older person (ie 20s+) given your hours.

 

Wishing you all the best with your decision !

 

 

[ieh21]

I'm very late to answer and it seems like you've found your own answers. Still, here's my own experience for what it's worth!

 

I've had a nanny for the past 7 years. The first one we found was through the website Greataupair.com This works best for searching for someone who will be live-in but also gave us some leads for people who lived in our city and could live-out. It's great because it's simple to use, you can do a search and do some initial sifting rapidly. A friend of mine used it twice to hire Brazilian nannies and liked his experience. Our experience was less positive but it had nothing to do with the website.

 

We also used Craigslist, which didn't end up being very useful. Tons of people answered, most weren't close to meeting the qualifications we required (I'm not talking looking for someone with 3 PhDs and fluent in some obscure Japanese dialect, I'm talking "available to work 7AM-6PM" and having people answer that they would love the job and does it matter than they can't work until 10AM.) We also sifted the Craigslist adds but that wasn't super helpful either. However, overall, I'm glad we went down that road because it helped us figure out what we wanted and it helped us get a reality check on what kinds of candidates to expect. We did find one person who was amazing, except she quit for a better paying post three days after starting, leaving my DH to deal with the consequences without notice (I was out of town.)

 

That experience is what convinced us to go through an agency. Their main downside in our mind was that they cost upfront cash. We worked with an agency that places Fillipinas to work as live-in or live-out nannies. It was amazing. We gave specific criteria, they returned with 6 people to interview. We picked one, liked her a lot and when she left after a few weeks to go visit her sister (!), we called them back and they sent another 6 candidates. By that time we were super good at picking good matches for our family. So we offered one of them a job an hour after she left the interview and she's been with us since 2010. She in turn has been very good at helping some of my friends find help and she never leaves on holiday without getting one of her friends to cover for me. She is exceptional.

 

The first nanny, who we ended up firing, was actually not a bad nanny. We learned from that experience that you have to be super clear about your expectations and you have to give yourself some time to adjust to the idea that there's a stranger making decisions regarding your child without your constant input. Sure, you give guidelines and rules, but at the end of the day, unless you want to answer questions all day long, you have to accept that another adult may do things differently than you would. I'm not trying to be snarky about it, but it takes time to adjust and we needed to be a bit patient with ourselves (as opposed to projecting our own discomfort on her and firing her the minute she did something that we felt wasn't perfect). We also learned that we had to identify those key things that are crucial and focus on them, making sure that the nanny was meeting our expectations in specific areas that were not negotiable. Or else you drive yourself nuts fretting about every single thing.

 

On the other hand, what we learned that was most important is that you can never fire someone early enough. Once things started to go badly, we hesitated. We argued amongst ourselves about the best way to handle things. We sat her down and tried to get her to change, tried to explain what was going wrong and what we expected. We negotiated with her on points she felt weren't working. We let it go for months until I finally agreed with DH to let her go. I think it was the happiest day of his life.

 

My current nanny is fantastic because she does a lot more than take care of the children. I was hesitant at first because she has her own child, and it did mean at first when the child was little that I had to accommodate HER childcare needs (like when her child was sick, my children were left without a nanny for a day or two.) But that passed as her child got older, and her having a child was actually a big plus because she knows what it's about. And she knows that she has to be reliable since she herself understands the consequences of flaky childcare providers. In the end, our two families are quite close, the children play with one another all the time and her husband sometimes helps me out. I've given her over time a lot of leeway to manage the household and flexibility to deal with her own life. In return, she's given me a lot of extra hours and her own flexibility to deal with my life (I'm particularly bad at being home on time, and I am crap at managing my own calendar, so she often gets the day-before "oh my god, can you babysit tomorrow night, I have a work thing?"). The basic lesson there is that as trust grows, you can come to rely on the person very much and if you form a strong bond, that person can become useful in essential ways that were not part of the original plan.