Am I wasting my money and her time? Advice appreciated

[Checkmate]

I've short listed the nannies who've applied to work for me. One of them is young and inexperienced, however is organised and has recently done some day courses (such as first aid), organised nanny insurance, got herself ofsted registered, and I really like her. Great references from her babysitting work too.

I've told her that if we offer her the job, we would like her to some actual childcare training (probably a correspondence course to fit around the hours we need her). We would pay for this, but she would be on a lower hourly rate and called a mothers help, until she completes the training. The job for us is 30 hours per week and initially not much sole charge (as I'll be on maternity leave) so this seems to be an ideal situation for us and her.

The issue I'm finding is that there is little difference in the courses available. There only now seems to be CACHE level 2/3 in Early years/children and young people, and these courses don't seem to cover much about child development or their care, more things like "promoting equality", "context & provisons in early years setting" and "setting up your own home-based child-care service". Although they say they're suitable for nursery workers, childminders and nannies, there seems to be much more content for the former two than the latter!

Am I wasting my money and her time? Is there a better course available, which covers practical things about childcare and child development, rather than the legalities of what needs to happen in nurseries and childminders homes? Should I just concentrate on training her in what I want in terms of the care of my baby, toddler, and older children during ML? Or should I just go for someone older and more experienced?

Any advice very welcome.

Mmm at the risk of sounding an educational snob I agree that where there are older DCs involved then a good spread of GCSEs at grade C or above become desirable, possibly even necessary for children at the top end of primary.

nannyl once you've done a degree, particularly if it's related to children in any way, of course vocational equivalents to A-levels seem easy! When you look at the profile of people doing them, however, they are quite challenging. There's a lot to cover if you don't have well developed study skills and a lot of it seems like common sense if you've read a few books and got some experience but doesn't when you're younger. I'm sure you'd have no problem tackling an A-level in any humanities subject having done a Bachelors. I've been doing final year equivalents at the OU in subjects I haven't studied since GCSES and I can do that because the actual knowledge is finite and not that hard to acquire once you work out what they're asking, know how to study and know how to write an essay.

OFSTED reg course is a piece of cake though. I did it with a bunch of pre-reg CMs and I was quite depressed at how many were struggling :(

agree frakyou.... very good point

I still thought the course was far far easier than an A / AS level that I studied, and to be honest easier than most of my GCSE's as well.... though of course when doing GCSE's I most certainly didnt have the studying experiance / skills that id aquired by the end of my degree!
(I did it as a short course, 1 evening a week, term time (but long holidays) between end of September and May, so less than 1 academic year!... you could only be on my course if you were already working in a childcare setting)

(I too was depressed at how some people seemed to really struggle with the course!)

But the bulk of the marks on NVQs came from observation. Which was a positive and a negative in that it ensured experience but of necessity academic standards had to be lower in terms of amount of theory covered. Compare an activity/portfolio based A-level to an academic one and you start to get the idea.

The idea of the newfangled diploma is to move back to the old old style NNEB where you had to actually know a lot of stuff. Qualifications just got too split - BTEC if you were academic after GCSEs, CACHE diploma if you were averagely capable after GCSEs and NVQ if you were already working - and standards wrre being measured in different ways. An NVQ and a BTEC were both lebel 3 and supposedly equivalent but everyone knows they weren't. That's before we start on the various subspecialisations....

Lack of qualifications generally could well be an issue. Some people seem to me to go into childcare because they can't do anything else due to poor grades obtained at school. For many of the nannies who post on here though that isn't the case as in the past we have discussed what educational hisory we have and I'm the dunce as highest I've got is an HND which is below Degree.

Checkmate - you said that the nanny does have babysitting experience, so what has that involved. It may have involved quite a bit, or may have involved very little. Some babysitters may be caring for children who are awake, who need a bath before going to bed etc. So if you feel that she is still in the running, then investigate more about what practical childcare experience she has from the babysitting and any other thing she may have done with children, such as caring for younger siblings.

I seem to recall that the NNEB course I did at one point involved bathing a baby (doll). Not sure courses include that these days, though they might but bathing a doll is not like bathing a wriggly, slippery baby. Theory is all well and good but practical experience is where most of the learning takes place in my view. Maybe this potential nanny just doesn't have enough practical experience to make you feel confident that they would cope with your children. They may be better off finding a family with less children and getting more of a grounding of experience in childcare before tackling a larger family.

How about other candidates - are there any in the running?

The off topic is interesting, so no need to apologise frak.

nannynick
She worked for 6 months in a nursery after gcse's; good reference from there. Has continued babysitting for families she met at the nursery, while working in another sector. Definitely more than just sitting there while they sleep, as some of it has been daytime care, or teatimes, but on an ad hoc basis, over past few years. All the children have been at least a year old. But I think she'll learn fast with the baby, and because I breastfeed I need her there more for the (nearly) 2 year old, and 3 school age DC after/before school for the first 6 months or so until I start work again (even then will be working from home.)

The other candidate, DH's favourite, is late 20's, married, husband has a good job so she says she no longer needs to earn a full time wage and wants to work 30 hours a week (which is what we're offering) so is leaving the 45hours+ job she's being doing teaching in a montessori nursery. She was a nanny to young babies before her teaching degree. She lives very locally to us, and I actually responded to her ad "looking for a new family" rather than her replying to mine, iyswim. She was clearly looking for a family with a spread of ages to suit her varied experience, and she is a fluent Spanish speaker and included in her ad that she'd love to teach the children Spanish.

DH thinks she'd be much better at helping the older DC with their homework,
loves the idea of them starting to learn Spanish, etc.. I agree with him, but I also feel that she's not that much younger than me, and as some parts of the job are shared care, I wonder if we might clash sometimes. Having someone I can train to do things my way, might make life easier than someone very experienced and opinionated. I genuinely like her, but I also think she'll be less flexible if we wanted to change her hours or anything (though she says she would be flexible).

We're getting both back for 2nd interviews over the next week. Its so strange that the 2 we've liked have been opposite end of spectrum, the other 3 we interviewed: 1 had poor references, including 3 weeks of sick leave in past year, 1 said "oh my god" every other sentence and looked at her mobile every 5 minutes, 3/ we didn't click with at all, didn't seem warm with the children.

I think I haven't had loads of applicants because its only 30 hours and the complications with my ML and some shared care. Though why any nanny would want 5 kids sole care is beyond me; I can't manage it, hence needing a nanny!

5 applicants is great. You don't want lots of applicants, makes it hard to choose. You want just a couple who meet the minimum requirements and then you see how they gel with all the family.

My mumboss is younger than me, I don't think we found it an issue whilst she was on ML. Keep in mind that a nanny is an employee, you tell them what to do. Sure an older nanny may well have their particular ways of doing things but ultimately it's you who has control. Nanny and parents need to get along though, be a united front otherwise the children will play one off against another - "but mummy lets me" "but nanny lets me" type thing.

Oh yes, my older bratbags already try to
Play me and our current AP off against each other, which the AP almost always falls for, which is part of why we're switching to a nanny!