People who advertise specifically for a Fillipino housekeeper or nanny

Over here, Kew - the jacuzzi is free (and my DH is already running for the hills)

sorry, not enough money to do the posh places at the moment. Not even stretching to the cheaper places this month as I have to save for my lovely holiday at Christmas 2008

2008 meet-ups will be pub or cafe tyoe ones only for me on my £25 budget!

Do you think Nannynick's ears are burning yet?

Kew, if you had shown up last Friday, you would remember who magic was and who Page62 was. They were both there. You were not.

When dh was working away (2 years), I would have killed for a male mother's help (can't afford a nanny), simply because I felt my son needed a male around the place a bit more.
None to be had tho'

oh god my brain is fried...

no...............
magicmonkey was the one beside me who came late....i was late, but not as late as her!

balancingact?! weren't you magicmonkey/mummymagic/monkeymagic somethign like that?

PS - had the concertina photos like your from Kodak gallery done for Xmas and to send to DS's orphanage - they're really lovely.

hahahahha

my DD's not mine!

well i have a male nanny and he doesn't know my intimate details!

Kewcumber, yes, it's me, previously balancingact!

i must admit, i did have certain nationalities in mind when i started interviewing nannies. Clearly the stereotypes don't always hold; having been put off by what i thought english nannies would expect me to provide her, i now employ one who i wish to keep till the kids are all in full time school (and even then she can look after me) ;-). I must admit, i tried to look for a Filipina too - but couldn't find anyone who was here who could ALSO drive -- the main driver being i wanted the kids to learn to speak Filipino -i know, i know, i should do it myself but very hard when DH doesn't know how to speak it.
So so far, my daugher knows the Filipino word for "yummy" and "armpits". wonderful.

Neal v Watts "A male applicant for a nanny post in a private home claimed sex discrimination when refused an interview although he had a recognised certificate as a nanny. The Tribunal found that the GOQ applied as he would be required to live in private premises and the job required a large degree of physical and social contact with, and knowledge of intimate details of the child's mother"

...which is a relief because I was about to pull an advert for a female AP just in case

...mind you....knowledge of intimate details of the mother sounds just the ticket in my gobi desert life..

...but I think it all depends on the individual situations...

RahRah - when employing people to work in your home with children, it is lawful to discriminate on the grounds of race, belief, religion & sexual orientation. Childcare is one of the few exceptions to general discrimination law (there are also certain exclusions to maximum hours directive and minumum wage directive too when it comes to nannies...)

not the best of sites but some examples here

Of course, all you really have to do is recruit on greatuapair.com and do a search based on nationality.

But, of course, the logistics of herr the filipina through immigration might put a stop to the whole thing.

I must admit I did pick certain countries and exclude others when I did my recent nanny search.

Now, what about people who specifically hire female (or male) nannies? Are they guilty of sexual discrimination? What about the devout Catholic family who chooses one nanny over another specifically because she is christian and the other applicant was a scientologist?

Equality Human Rights Commission on discrimination in recruitment and job advertising here if anyone is interested. Seems unlikely that a 'genuine occupational requirement' could be justified.

Page62 - I (very dimly) have just realised who you are and what your name means [duh emoticon]

In Spain, since the 60's there were many upper class families that would have filipin maids and a British nanny (called Nurses)

Not sure about the fact that a nationality shoudn;t be requested. If I am Spanish and would like an Spanish nanny for my daughter for cultural reasons I don;t see why I should't.

In Toronto, it seems like all the nannies are filipina. Maybe it's just what people are used to?

I would hire a filipina in a second if I could because I love their family-orientated attitude and their catholicism. I used to work a lot in Asia and the filipina nannies I met all seemed to give me the impression that they would give their lives for their charges (ok, maybe I have romantisised this a bit, but you get the gist). And though I agree with the sadness of having them work for me while their own kids are being brought up without them, I've seen the kind of conditions that some of them work in in Hong Kong (a nanny sleeping in a working airing cupboard was the worst case I saw), and I know that at least I would be providing a filipina with a good life and a fare home regularly, and paying her enough to give her kids a better life.

I used to think that using people from poorer nations as staff was incredibly derogatory, but then I lived in Africa and discovered how much of a difference my pittance of a wage made to people (literally life and death when my maid's husband had a stroke and would have died if we hadn't been able to pay for him to go to hospital). I absolutley hate the disparity between nations, but giving people from poorer countries work is in my eyes enabling them rather than exploiting them....

Or maybe I just twist my views to suit my preferred position... can't really answer that one.

The problem though is that although I would sponsor a filipina in a heartbeat, I have been told it is simply not possible - I was told by the immigration department that they are simply not allowed visa's to work as nannies in the UK? I will be first in the line if I am wrong about this....

I have never looked into it myself because i know what a T-E-D-I-O-U-S process the whole thing is, having gone through the process myself - any my company was sponsoring me, plus i was married to a brit!
Sadly, this is the case with most filipina overseas workers - i.e. they leave their family behind because what they will earn here is probably 50x what they will earn in Manila, so their kids can go to better schools etc and they have a better shot at breaking the chain of poverty..... but agree, all terribly depressing

Ok, so I thought that it was pretty much impossible to sponsor a domestic worker into the country. What would one have to do to get a filipina (or any other country) into the country? Wouldn't it be time for a new nanny before she got her visa?

Oh, and the ads that say they are prepared to leave their own children behind to come and look after mine break my heart. I could never hire someone knowing it was keeping her from her own children.