Babysitting Scheme

[deedledum]

Hi,

I run a mother and toddler group in a small village in NE Scotland which i moved to from England 3 years ago. Consequently I have no family around to help out with babysitting but know lots of other mums. Someone mentioned to me setting up a babysitting scheme/rota whereby each mum wanting to be involved would have a certain no. of points to start with, say 20, then each babysitting duty they did would take away your points to add to their own (higher points for evenings than daytimes). I am not entirely clear on how this works and don't want to suggest it until i am, does anyone know what i am on about/run/are involved a similar thing? Any advice welcome! Thanks

No, but sounds interesting, so I'll give it a bump!

Hi Deedledum

I was in the same position as you and joined a babysitting cirle with a group of NCT chums and it worked really well. As we used to socialise with the people on the list the children knew them so there was never a problem with being left either. I think it is a brilliant arrangement.

The way our group works is that everyone joins with twenty points (or "twenty hours of credit". Each member of the group takes it in turn to "hold the book" which is a register of everyones name, contact number, address and the number of points they currently hold. When you need a sitter you call the "bookholder" tell her the date of the sit you require and how long you will want her for (approximately). The bookholder then calls around the group to find someone to do the sit. The bookholder then calls the person who asked for the sit originally to tell her who will be doing it.

After the sit has been done the person who sat calls the bookholder to register the number of hours she sat. This goes in the book as a plus xpoints for the amount of hours the sitter sat for and a minus xpoints for the person who booked the sitter. No one is allowed to request a sitter after their "points bank" reaches 0. It is of course best that it is not allowed to get that low. The bookholder should start the search beginning with the people who have the fewest points in credit.

The only "down side" is holding the book which is why it is a good idea for everyone to take it for one month at a time and then pass it on.

Hope that makes sense

Hope that makes sense.

that sounds about right. i was wondering if we could have a chart up on the wall at Mother & toddlers, but then that would mean you could only see it once a week so a book would be required. another site has recommended www.mynightoff.com as a 21st century version! I will have to see how computer literate my group is! what happens if someone doesn't pull their weight in the group?
many many thanks for your advice.

You have to hope that people are not going to abuse it but you could say that no more sits will be done for anyone with, say, 5 points or less. If everyone is serious about it it wont happen because it means they will lose out ultimately

our scheme is the same as dizzydo but we start off with 30 points.

Before midnight its 2 points per hour (1/2 point per fifteen mins)
After midnight its 4 points per hour (1 point per fifteen mins)

The main problem is passing on the book at the end of the month - sometimes it can be a week or more b4 the book changes hands.

Also you can't do very much about people who leave and haven't made up their points (we ask people to ensure they have 30 points when they leave).

By using ayla99's caclulations you get less "sittings" for your points which would be a good idea if you think there might be problems with people not doing their fair share IYSWIM

I have heard of a scheme where you have tokens and decide beforehand how many tokens per hour or whatever. Then, you just decide between you and the other person and give tokens as necessary. You would obviously have to baby sit to get more tokens to use again but no-one is allowed to hold on to too many tokens at one time.
Don't know if that makes sense but it does save someone being "in charge" - and knowing where and when everyone is going all the time!

I set up a scheme with tokens - made them using clipart off the Net then laminated them and cut them up! Everyone starts with 10 tokens. When you run out you just have to do some sitting, and can email around to say you want to do some. No-one is supposed to have more than 25 tokens at one time. We 'charge' one token per hour up to 11.00, then 1 token per 1/2 hour after 11pm.
I was determined not to have to chase people around, most of the other parents are also extremely busy and I can't see a book scheme working. This way everybody just sorts it out themselves. My role in it is to regularly circulate a list of members with all contact details, and I have been/will be hosting some gatherings to allow parents to meet each other if they don't know already. New members can only join by invitation, ie an existing member 'vouches' for them.
The one thing that really makes it easier is when people are on email and regularly check it, then you can just send out a 'group' email saying 'who can do Saturday night' for example rather than ringing around.
I would say that the optimum number of members is somewhere between 10-20. Any fewer and some people will regularly run out of tokens; any more and you start feeling you don't know the parents involved.

that sounds like the sort of thing my friend was talking about hovely