How did you recruit your babysitter?

oops we are in a place that describes the colour of a piece of arable land.

well i think so. you must be where i am thinking of. how exciting! i think i must have come very near you to collect our new chickens. lovely around there. we moved to the county in december so are still getting to know it

Overthemill.. I am in near an airfield/university (does that help at all lol) don't really want to type it out on here..

Where abouts are you?

nannynick, that is what we will do. want to keep cost as low as possible.

Something that houseprice data sites are now doing is using Google Maps to show locations.
So for a babysitter search type system, you could center the map on the postcode entered by the parent, and plot on the map the locations at which there are babysitters. However, doing this reveals the postcodes of those individual babysitters.

Postcode systems I have developed in the past have used a set of around 3000 postcode to Lon/Lat points - Postcode Districts. This is sufficient to give a reasonable estimate on distance but is not precise. To get precise you need to hold all postcode points in Lon/Lat format (so Postcode: District with Sector and Unit - around 1.7 million records) which Royal Mail charge for on an annual PAF licence (thus costly - bph-postcodes says a little under £1100 per year).
So sites which don't charge a user very much have to compromise between search accruacy and how much they can afford to pay for the data.

Puddlet - When I babysit, I just take over at whatever stage the parents are at when I arrive. That could mean doing bathtime, evening feed etc.
If you put you DD to bed, then go out and she wakes up, I would expect the sitter to resettle her, give bottle feed if appropriate. Personally I don't call parents home... can't recall when I've ever done that.
I find it is best to stick to whatever bedtime routine you may have. But if you find that your DD has noticed that something is up... then don't put pressure on yourself or her... be relaxed about it and just keep her up for the sitter to put to bed.
When your sitter comes for a pre-visit, then go through things such as where to find feed equipment and how you prepare feeds. Your DD may well have a preference for feeds to be at a certain temperature for example.

thanks for comment - will give it to tech guy and he can check this out.

so far as i understand it the p/code search searches radius of the centre of the postcode using some kind of satnavtype software (as used by loads of other sites i think). i owuld love it to be better as i am weary of people who use town search and get daft results, ie i am mk45 so the town search software for me would put me in milton keynes. not useful as i am actually about 20 miles away, in different county etc!

overthemill, great site! Glad to find it.

Got a technical question/issue though.

As far as I can tell your search facility doesn't cross county boundaries...

I live right on the edge of three counties, yet the search within 20 miles facility only brings up ones with the same postcode stem as me.

This is daft - when I searched on the neighbouring town (which is within 20 miles but has a different postcode town) - more potential babysitters come up but I wouldn't have found them had I not tried this.

Do you need your search facility to be a bit more complex?

check out the new babysitters thread seems to be sitters in most areas.

london is spolit for choice

I couldn't find anything, but I might be being dim.

It happens a lot!

there is something in FAQs (i hope

anyway am on livechat with tech guy at this very minute talking about changes we want. so tell me NOW what would help you use it/join!!!

aha, now it makes sense. perhaps a q about it in the FAQ would be a good idea?

hope you don't think I'm criticising

masaraohara
sorry got sidetrack by tech issues:
lol at sexybabysitter

i too love quirky pics but do worry about what some people would think
we have chickens so a chicken on your shoulder is kind of a pre req for us!!
ps where are you?!

littledancing
approved means they have that approval thing so you are able to use childcare vouchers. used to be ofsetd registration. usually applies to qualified nannies/reg childminders

absolutely ok to ask sitter to do this stuff as long as you make it clear before hand. most babies sleep through but i'd expect frequent checking/baby monitor.

in this case you'd want to make sure you ahd an experienced sitter/older sitter/one with under 1 experience

i wouldnt leave a baby with a non family teenager, for example
goo dluck!

overthemill what does it mean on your site when it says 'Approved'? can't figure out what that's all about.

thanks

This thread has some great ideas on it and I'll definitely take up some of the suggestions. I have got a question though - Our baby is nearly 5 months and we've only had family look after her so far so I'm not sure of the etiquette. If we put her to bed and then go out but she wakes during the evening would it be reasonable to expect the sitter to resettle her/ feed her if necessary? Or should we expect to come home early? She often does sleep all evening but I can't guarantee it and that makes me a bit nervous about going out.

aha it no longer costs me any money. have just finished paying for the set up costs and initially advertising. i can afford to offera few 'free' memberships (which I often do to people refered via contact a family)

i hope that in a year or so it might even make a profit but as we are at this very moment updating the site i'm about to be in hock again.

but the best thing in the world is when a mum of a disabled child lets me know they got agreat sitter via the site. honestly makes it all owrth while.

its done nick you are up all new and shiny.
now how's that for a responsive service??

thanks... have sent to Iain. He can figure it out.

Oh don't you just love IT systems

FindASitter has been going 2 years now, I'm impressed. Doubt it has made your fortune, but with luck it does at least pay for itself.

renamed to nick.jpg - still didn't work.
Wonder what else it could be.
If I hard code the URL string, I can get an error produced:
Folder e:\domains\f\findasitter.co.uk\user\htdocs\sitterPICS\29\ exists

hey he says email the photo to
iain at woodit dot co dot uk

hey he says email the photo to
iain at woodit dot co dot uk

Overthemill - tried using FireFox 3 and IE7. There is already a photo on my profile, so was trying to replace that. Hope that helps your tech guy.