Should I pay my babysitter more money in emergencies?

Can I just say, for a person (Childminder) to look after a child in their own home, they have to be Ofsted registered, with a paediatric first aid qualification, Public liability insurance, Safeguarding training, if you drive a car within your childminding role, business car insurance.
Childminders also take many other courses as part of their CPD, ie Food Hygiene, Health and Safety, Prevent, to name a few.
I also had /have a Level 3 CYPW (children and young people’s workforce qualification).

If a person is busy /at classes then more money isn't going to help

Children do pick up bugs a lot when first go to nursery

If you are often late then see if a nursery worker can take home and babysit

If they are ill and you are both at work then try a local nanny agency but likely to be different people

So you want to pay someone more money to skip a class to watch your sick child because you won't skip work?
Why does your work trump her studies given that the child isn't even related to her?
Unfortunately kids get sick. It's part of life. All childcare comes with it's own problems. I.e. nannies could get sick (I rarely take time off!) Or if child is sick nurseries often won't take them.

TiramisuQueenoftheFaeries...

medically trained - the op is asking someone to take responsibility for their sick child, not the parent doing so and not specifically someone with any child illness experience. If you care for sick children you are increasing your chances of something seriously going wrong. If you have ever had to deal with febrile convulsions in a 2 year old who came to you just with a cold you would understand how scary that is even if you have training. If you have had to care for a child having their first asthma attack which was supposedly a bit of a cough and cold you will also know this could result in severe consequences......as a parent you have no choice and get on maybe all turns out well but their is nobody other than you to blame or sue. But if your child then suffers a life changing effect they have to sue the carer who was paid to look after them or have no financial support for life. Hence the reason I questioned it.

Chicken pox can have serious and life threatening complications, then d & V your asking a student to risk getting it and not being ablke to go to college and to cope with upset clingy children and dose them with medication that could potentially cause side effects or overdoses....their is a reason why paperwork for medication is compulsory in registered care....being that children have died being given it by the setting as parents forgot they had given it before or had not previously tried it and the child had an allergic reaction.
Sick children are much more risky to care for and the baby sitter will be unlikely to have the insurance to cover themselves for it. But I guess that's okay to potentially ruin someone's future to save a few pennies or holiday entitlement.

Have you dealt with a sick child who wasn't too bad when mummy left but is now screaming clingy vomiting and an temp over 40 that you dot know well and cant calm and mummy is not available for an hour or more? Its horrendous distressing and very upsetting for the child who then gets more and more distressed. Especially as the day draws on they get more tiered and as is the nature of even a cold it gets worse at night.

Is your sitter medically trained? Could she cope with a change in health needing a blue light to hospital?

Er, how many mothers are medically trained? Most people can cope with calling an ambulance in the very unlikely event that someone takes seriously ill. I don't see how a competent babysitter is any more or less able to do this than the average mother. I definitely did not get a "medical training" brain insert along with the positive pregnancy test.

Besides, children are often too "ill" for a nursery to accept them without really being very ill at all (slight cold, threw up 24hrs ago but now feels fine, etc). Why shouldn't they be in suitable alternative childcare in this scenario? I don't think the OP's current childcare strategy works or that she should try and get the current babysitter to do more hours, but I don't think all this "how could you heartlessly leave your SICK CHILD in childcare" is justified.

Is your sitter medically trained? Could she cope with a change in health needing a blue light to hospital?

Who did you think would look after your sick child when they were ill or did you think children don't get ill and don't need mummy/daddy when they are ill?
Put your child first and leave work to care for them especially if you know they are sick.

If my kids are sick I or my partner leave work and stay home with them.

Yeah, there's a large difference in costs the last time I checked. Also because the nursery is subsidised by DH's workplace so it's pre-tax, which makes it a lot more affordable. But on the flipside my work is extremely flexible, so we don't really need the kind of flexibility from childcare that others might.

Anyway, not meaning to derail OPs thread. Hopefully s/he finds a solution that works!

I mean, a nanny does help with that stuff! If you have your own you don't have to go elsewhere for dropoff/pickup and you don't have to take time off for sick children. But yes you absolutely still have to get home on time for pickup. It is a benefit though that with pre-arrangement and agreement our nanny will take my DC home and put him to bed. But if I were regularly calling to say I wouldn't make pickup, I would expect to be having to pay her well above the average to tolerate that kind of uncertainty and long days. Very occasionally when I've been ill and DH can't make pickup in time we've paid her an extra hour to take DC home and put him to bed.

My nanny share costs broadly the same as nursery but of course a lot depends on market rates in your area and the family you are sharing with. I also still have to do pickup and dropoff most days as it's hosted at the other family's home.

Maybe at 14 months old your baby wants their mother or father of they are sick. 8 to 6 every day is a long time to be at nursery, especially with all the bugs that go round. My step son does this and it's heartbreaking. His mother would rather he was there than with family.

Maybe speak to work and see if they can be more flexible with using hours for annual leave or working from home?

Yeah, didn't mean that bit too seriously, and I agree with you Tiramisu.

It's funny isn't it to sometimes run into things that money can't actually buy. I haven't given these much thought because a nanny would be unaffordable for us - so we just plan to tweak our hours and working days etc to accommodate nursery pick up / drop off etc. I just vaguely assumed that someone able to afford a nanny would not need to do any of the advance planning / running home from work at 4.50 on the dot etc that we'd have to. But thinking about it, of course one would!

ou're probably going to get slated a bit since most of us don't have the extra cash lying around to throw at this problem and are likely to feel jealous.

I don't really think that's it - I do have a nanny share and it's in part because it solves the issue of not being able to send a sick child to nursery. But regular, last-minute evening care is a different proposition again - my nanny is very flexible and we explicitly discussed the question of evening babysitting but we still use it very rarely without prearrangement because it's a big imposition and if it's going to happen often needs to be explicitly contracted for.

Money can indeed solve many problems but I would suggest that OP needs to take into account that she is asking quite a lot of a child carer. I think she should get a nanny and either be prepared to pay that nanny over the odds for, say, 2 last minute evenings a week, or also have a short-notice babysitter that she pays over the odds to accept that kind of unpredictability. Because it's a bugger to ask of someone. It prevents them being able to reliably plan their own time at all. And nannies do long days as it is, so asking one to do a 14+ hour day is asking a lot.

Also, it'll be a lot less inconvenient to ask someone to extend their hours from 8-6 to 8-7 on one day if your DS is sick. Much more disruptive to randomly ask them to show up 6-7 one evening because your DS is sick.

Can you ask any of your DS' nursery staff if they might do some child minding after hours if that's allowed by the nursery?

You want to get a babysitter that sits at home waiting for you to ring with a job? You might need to re think your needs.

*used

A babysitter is typically for planned nights out etc right? Not for ad-hoc childcare when your kid is sick. You might be better off pulling your child out of nursery and getting a nanny or a nanny-share. Our friends ended up doing that after their DS kept getting repeated infections and falling ill in nursery - just doesn't seem to suit some kids.

It is feasible to fix the problem by throwing more money at it. Just not via a babysitter. But you're probably going to get slated a bit since most of us don't have the extra cash lying around to throw at this problem and are likely to feel jealous.

So do you all have more than one sitter for these type of situations?. I have never is d a sitter for a sick child. If any of mine are ill then either DH or I will go home.

Well, it's possible that it might, but it's a shitty choice to give to a student. You need to look beyond your own wants and needs a bit here.

If you want one flexible, available-at-short-notice carer then you need to pay for a nanny or find a nanny share. Emergency care is always possible but it costs extra and you have to take whoever's free. If this is a regular thing for you then a casual babysitter doesn't fit your needs.

Why don't you get a full time nanny if you want your child to have as few caregivers as possible.

Having said that, I'd hate to work for the kind of person who thought it was appropriate to bribe a student out their classes.

No ! You shouldn't ask her to cut classes to babysit for you. Find someone else

Don't encourage a student to miss classes!! That's horrid!

I think that'd be a pretty unfair thing to do to her tbh. If you frequently need last minute "out of hours" care and you want someone consistent, I think you should find someone specifically for that rather than putting pressure on your babysitter to deprioritise her education.