Nannyshare advice please

[peapod2010]

This is my first ever post on any forum, so please forgive my fumbling attements

We have a DD who will be approx 9 mths in January, when we plan to begin sharing a nanny with another couple with a baby of the same age. The nanny would look after both babies full time in one or other of our houses. We live in a rural area about 3 miles from the other couple, so would need a live out nanny with their own transport who would be willing to take the children out to groups, the park etc. We have done a fair amount of research and plan to use a payroll service for contracts etc, but there are still a few things I don't feel I know enough about. Specifically I would love some advice on the following:

1. Is this a job anyone would actually want to do? We have not got any alternative plans at the moment, so if nannyshare jobs such as this are not very desirable, we need to think about a plan B incase we can't find any suitable candidates.

1. How far in advance should we start looking? I'm aware notice periods are standardly quite short- so is there any point starting to look yet?

1. Where should we look? I've seen some websites we could advertise on, or are there significant advantages with going through an agency?

Any other views or experiences of nannyshares would also be gratefully received.

I have done this job twice.

Job one - 2 babies of a very similar age. I worked in both houses a month at a time. I had a 1 month trial period and then 3 months notice.

Job two - 2 days at one house, 3 days at another. Same notice period.

First job was through the Lady, the second through an agency.

we had a nanny share when dd1 was a baby. it was with a family in the next street but one of the things that caused issues was the start/finish time.

I suggest you think very carefully about how this will be handled given the three mile journey - are you expecting the nanny to pick up a child and take it to the other house or are the non-resident family going to deliver the child? This became a real issue for us because when the share was based at their house we delivered our baby but when it was based at ours the nanny went and collected theirs first - which meant that our effective start time was between 15 and 30 minutes later depending how long she chatted to the other mother (who worked from home) for. The nanny didn't see this as a problem since she had started work on time - and the other family didn't (or didn't want to) see our point of view.

You'll get conflicting advice on agencies here! My ideal nanny is qualified, experienced, English mother tongue, and if everything works out, stays for a number of years. I find I get better candidates from agencies. Other people here prefer to recruit direct.

We had a nanny share when DS1 was a baby. It was entirely based at our house. The other mum worked slightly shorter hours than me, and brought her baby to our house and picked up from there, so this worked well as we both got catch up time with the nanny.

I'd start looking in a couple of weeks. If nanny is on a month's notice, you want her to resign at the start of December. If nanny is working with another family at the moment it might take time to organise interviews and second interviews. Then you need to check references.

It was a great way to start employing a nanny, IME - costs are lower and you get someone else to agonise with, and sanity check.

Thanks for sharing your experiences- it's good to know that similar arrangements have worked (or not, in your case, Mrs Wobble).

I like the idea of having a reasonable spell in each house at a time like the month you experienced, Sorrento. My thought had been that it would be the parents' responsibility to get the non-resident baby to the other house, but will make sure we have a proper discussion about it first.

Thanks again.

It should be the parents responsibility to get the child to the other house. I used to take the child home to their house when not based there very very occasionally but by then had worked for them a long time and didn't mind.
You also need to sort out what happens when a child is sick.

Thanks, Sorrento. We are hoping that a nanny will be OK about having children with colds and other minor problems, but otherwise whoever's child is sick will have to take time off work. Does that sound normal?

Fridayschild- thanks for your advice. The timing to start the search confirms what we were thinking, which is great.

I wasn't thinking about it from the nanny's point of view tbh but the parents. I have had situations where the mother of the sick child has refused to stay home and the other mother not happy at me having to have both children. It needs to be in a contract that the mother of the sick child will take care of them because it will be all agreed, yes of course one will stay off, and then when it happens, oh I have a meeting, I am needed at work etc etc.

and without wishing to put you off as these arrangements can work well, you do need to think about how flexible you want the arrangements to be. we ended up feeling that we were constantly having to rearrange things for the other family's convenience eg they would ask for change of location on a particular day so that the nanny could deal with repairmen. It seems petty to complain but it meant that our child missed out on something we had arranged that was no longer possible because they were all waiting in. The first time this happens you shrug your shoulders and let it go - by the time it becomes a problem - say the third time in two months - you've already set the precedent that it's acceptable so it's again difficult to complain.

the best advice I can give is to make sure you get an experienced and reasonably strong minded nanny as she will need to be able to referee - as sorrento56 has already said it's easy to agree hypothetically and it's the actual management of the issues that counts.

MrsWobble, it sounds like you encountered many of the same problems as we did with our nanny share, the start times being just one. When we started the share it was agreed that each family would pick up and drop off but the other family ended up getting the nanny to pick up and drop off their child so they ended up getting almost 30 minutes more each day. It seemed petty to raise it at the time but it did grate. The share also started out 3 days at ours, 2 days at theirs but ended up 5 days at ours so we were paying for all food, nappies, milk etc. How did you end up resolving these issues or did you leave the share?

our share ended - the nanny decided it wasn't working for her. whilst our initial reaction was to panic a bit, actually it couldn't have turned out better. we knew a lot more about what we wanted/needed from a nanny so were much better nanny employers and found an absolutely brilliant nanny who stayed with us for the next 9 years and now has a family of her own but is still in contact with us all.