where/what to advertise

[sleeplessinderbyshire]

Hi. DD is 2yrs 1 month and absolutely adores her wonderful nursery. Unfortunately we are struggling with picking up from nursery in the evenings as DH currently has a short term contract where he is 60 miles away most days til 6.30 or so. Prior to this he was working from home on a very limited salary and could do all pick ups and drop offs. This new contract is short term at present so we need a temporary solution (iei don't want a nanny and to lose DD nursery place in case we are back to less cash and shorter hours in 3 months).

Nursery is about 2-3 miles from home, my work is halfway to nursery (so 1.5 miles away). I am a GP so finish at 5.30 or 6 on a good day but if on call I have to be available at least til 1830 and if I have a late visit to do may be at work til 7-8pm at least. I work on 4 days, normally 2 full days (one on call) one half day morning (easy no problem but it's a different day each week) and one much shorter day where nursery is never an issue. On on call days I've been picking DD up at just before 6 and bringing her back to work with me and the reception staff entertain her if I have a patient to see. This was OK in emergency situations but is no good medium term. I am a partner at work so felt was OK to use staff in this way on a few evenings but I am aware my other GP colleagues are not happy with it and I get stessed as if I have a late visit I have to beg someone to hve DD. Additionally one of my colleagues had a serious car crash last week and needs 4 months off work so I suspect my half days will end up being full days for the forseeable future.

I feel I really need someone to bring DD home, sort out a snack for her and play/watch cbeebies for an hour or so 2 or perhaps 3 nights a week for a few months. Lovely lady up the road might be keen (grandma to DD's best playmate from nursery and single, in mid 60s and looking for a little bit of money and loves kids). If not I suspect I might persuade one of DDs favourite girls from nursery who has stepped into the breech on a coupe of occasions but not sure she'd be keen on a regular basis and it's harder with the days being different. suppose I could place an advert somewhere but where and how?

How am I best advertising this to someone? It's basically babysitting isn't it? Wondered about going whole hog for au pair and then get some light housework done too but not able to provide a car and walking the 3 miles in the wet dark along a main road would not be safe.

any ideas?

It's not really babysitting as you are needing a collection from nursery service and then making a snack, getting your DD ready for bed etc. So it's more than just being at your house whilst your DD is in bed asleep, or reading a bedtime story to DD then getting her into bed.

So sort of a cross between a nanny and a babysitter - no reason why you couldn't call it babysitting but you will need someone who is able to do the nursery collection - which sounds like it will involve having a car and thus a suitable carseat.

Using one (or more) staff from the nursery, if nursery allows that, is certainly something to look at as they already know your DD and they are not needing to go out of their way to pickup your DD from nursery. However nursery staff may not be able to leave nursery until all children have been collected, so you might incur extra costs at nursery as your DD would still be on the premises until the time that staff member gets to leave.

You could try creating a profile on Childcare.co.uk (click the ad that is often on this page, so Mumsnet gets the referral credit), and seeing if anyone responds. You could also look at other user profiles to see if there are any nannies/babysitters looking for work in your area.

no need for getting ready for bed. I'd supply car seat. She's usually the last to leave nursery anyway (and manager lives on site so almost always does the late extension pickups so shouldn't be so much of an issue)

would anyone actually be interested in such a role? How much would a reasonable rate be (we pay nursery girls £6-8 an hour usually)

I think you'd really struggle to get someone willing to do that on different days each week. If you're in London, you'd be okay if you could offer a few hours on a set day each week, you just need to put an ad on gumtree stating exactly what you need.
Probably your first port of call is to speak to the other partners in the practice and say "as you've noticed I'm struggling with childcare, its not ideal at all having to bring DD into work. I'm going to hire an after nursery childcarer, but they only way I can do this is to have set days in the week that I work late".
Otherwise you could hire an au pair and have her cover the shifts, I wouldn't worry about the car thing as long as the road was safe!

See Standard babysitter rate - there isn't a standard rate, it will vary by location, what you might expect someone to do, experience level of the person.

If you currently pay £6-£8 for an evening babysitter, then I expect you will need to be offering the top end of that for an early evening childcarer who needs to pickup a child (with carseat) from nursery.

The varying days I will be a problem.

I work for GP so know that you may well have trouble getting other partners to agree to things (especially if they are men who don't realise how tricky arranging childcare can be). However it may be worth at least asking if you could fix the on-call day for a temporary period, rather than having it change all the time.

What happens if DH's contract becomes long-term? Is it worth looking at alternative forms of childcare for the full day - such as a childminder or nanny?

as it's always a Mon/thur/fri that could be the issue but really only 2 of the 3 I thought I'd try to hire someone for all 3 days and pay them regardless of whether I actually needed them physically to do the work

nannynick you have it spot on re other partners (altho the main sticking point is actually a childless older woman)

I personally would hire and pay over the hours to have the security if you can afford it.

Nursery staff could get complicated as they have another job so even if you're under the tax threshold a semi-permanent arrangement means you'd end up operating PAYE on a BR tax code but they know your DD. How would you cope with them being sick or on holiday?

Have you tried asking the Nursery if any of the staff would be interested. When DD was at nursery there were several staff who did this for us.