How easily could my nanny find summer work?

[MeantToStopAtTwo]

To cut a long story short, I am seriously considering resigning from my job, spending the summer at home with my children and then retraining in Sept/Oct. If I went ahead with this, it would mean having to let go of our lovely nanny, which I would feel so awful about.

She hasn't been with us very long but would be leaving in Sept anyway to take a primary teaching job (we were prepared for this from the beginning as that is what she is trained for). Her only option would therefore be summer temp work. I have no idea what the market for that is like. Does anyone know?

When I did a term-time only job, I thought that finding work during school holidays would be easy. Reality was that it was not easy to find work. Ended up doing volunteering at local surestart children's centre. This was about 4 years ago... though I don't expect much has changed.

Has your nanny taken their full holiday entitlement... if not, they could take that during the summer. That way they would not be around, though you would still be paying them but you have to do that anyway if they have holiday left to take.

Have they officially handed in their notice so you know their last working day?

Oh dear, that is rather discouraging. She hasn't been with us long enough to have accumulated much holiday. Yes, she has officially handed-in her notice.

She has relatively little actual nanny experience unfortunately but is a qualified primary school teacher, simply fantastic with the children and we will be giving her an ace reference if that makes any difference.

Really Nick? I found there was plenty of temp work in London last summer! Especially if you had a job organised at the end as you could spend a week or 2 off in Europe on holidays with families!

Google temp nanny agency and there's plenty who'll come up! It should be even easier as a trained primary teacher!!

Thanks Beth.

Where are you located Nick? I wonder if that would make a big difference?

I'm not far from Nick and I agree there are loads of families looking for term time only care and hardly any looking for holiday cover. I think that is because a lot of local parents are themselves teachers or in education, but there are also a lot with sufficiently flexible jobs or own businesses to allow them to cover holidays. Family break up also plays a part here - a few Mums I know have the kids in term time, Dad will have them in the holidays. There are also a lot of holiday clubs around here. Older children will often prefer to go to a holiday club and meet up with their mates than have a nanny or childminder and spend time with their own siblings! But that also means there are a lot of jobs going in holiday clubs.

Which area minderjinx?

Our lovely nanny will be moving to London for her new job so I imagine (although don't know for sure) that she'd be looking there and could potentially go anywhere if live-in. She's currently back home with her parents in our fairly rural area but doesn't seem too thrilled about that and has few friends left locally of her own age.

Anyone want a fabulous primary school teacher nanny for the summer? Shout now!

Berks/Surrey border. Definitely commuter land but London may be different.

Berks/Surrey Border (near M3 Junction 3 in my case), only about 20 ish miles from London yet here there seems to be little demand for in-home childcare during school holidays. There are many holiday clubs run by councils, sports centres and private companies. I know childminders who have to compete on price with those clubs otherwise they lose the school aged children over the holidays - though sometimes they may not mind having some children term-time only.

London could well be different, although not a long distance away things can change quite a bit - including cost. If I nannied around 6 miles further towards London I could probably get a couple of extra £ per hour, but I don't want to commute within the M25.

varies on area - usually a far amount near me, though may not always be what you want

i did one temp job where i had to change the parents bed (wasnt impressed with that) let alone the sheets were stained

'blondes shudders'

when I worked term time only I never had trouble filling the holidays with work and actually was maternity nanny work (days only) that I did when I first started looking assumed I would be doing nanny work with school aged children but always managed to find temp work with babies or mat nurse type work.

Blondes - thanks for sharing such delightful tales!!!

Thanks all. Sounds like varies quite a lot by region.

eastmid i like to share :)