Babysitting rates in London - how much?

[mamaoftwo]

I've just booked a babysitter for the first time to look after my two children (3 and 1) for 2 and a half hours on Saturday morning. I have absolutely no idea how much the going rate is. We live in SE London, so expect to pay a premium, and the person in question is a 'mature' trained nursery nurse who is CRB checked. How much does everyone else pay?

Thanks

I think you can expect to pay more for daycare than for 'sitting whilst they sleep' type babysitting. We pay £6 an hour for the latter, so something north of that but less than £10 an hour for your arrangements I would have thought. Presumably you are going to ask what her usual rate is and work from there?

I would say somewhere between £8-10 per hour. Does the babysitter live locally? I find that if people have to travel any distance to do a job, most have a 4 hour minimum to cover travel expenses and to make it "worth their while".

Our nanny is about £9/hour during the day, but only £7/hour for evening (dd asleep) babysitting. Plus the taxi home afterwards.... Given that your lady is atrained nursey nurse, she might charge £10-ish....

(and we are west london)

Thanks eveyone for that. Any different rates from others?

On a related point, how do you find a reliable babysitter? My cleaner has helped me out but I would love to have a few other people who might be able to help.

Where could I advertise / look? Is an agency the only answer? When I was a teenager, I put an ad in the local post office window, and answered a few others.... positively raked it in at the princely sum of £5 for the evening (it was the early 80s though !) Don't feel desperately comfortable with answering an ad now - any suggestions?

TIA x

Message withdrawn

We live in South London, and pay £5 an hour (clearly we are a bit stingy!). We use our old nanny, and her cousin (nursery assistant). That's an evening rate, and we have a five and six year old.

KS, you must be a cheap part of Surrey! I'm paying £8 per hour for evening babysitting... not that I'm complaining mind, as the children adore our babysitter.

Loulie, finding a reliable babysitter is tricky. Found out latest via the web, not something everyone would feel happy about I expect, but it's worked well for us, as we have a qualified and experienced nursery nurse caring for our children, and the children don't mind at all about being left. Also it's handy having a babysitter who will just take over the bedtime routine at whatever point it's at - sometimes not even started!

Back in the 80's when I did babysitting as a teenager, like you I put ads in newagents windows. These days I don't see many of those sort of ads appearing. Now we all have the net... I tend to use that for most things, and it's not only the big agencies that use the web, we found an independent babysitter via searching on google.

Ok so our babysitter isn't a teenager... not sure how to find teenage babysitters. Anyone got any ideas? Word of mouth is probably best I guess.

To answer the origional question... daytime care isn't really babysitting, it's nannying. In my area, £10 per hour would be typical for ad-hoc nanny work like you describe. So 2.5 hours, I'd expect would cost £25 to £30, depending on minimum charges... after all if someone is coming some distance, then 2.5 hours isn't a very long time for daycare.

Jothorpe I hadn't actually considered that daytime babysitting is actually nannying, but you are right, it is. It seems that lots of people are paying different rates. I'm going to call her this evening to confirm Saturday and also how much we will pay her. She doesn't have a standard rate as she doesn't do much private babysitting/nanying (she's a full time daycare nursery nurse). I hate talking money - so wish me luck!!!

I don't think that daytime babysitting is necessarily nannying. If you hire the same person to come babysit every day while you go to work, then that is nannying. But if it is here and there, no regular schedule, and not a lot of hours, then I wouldn't think that would be nannying.