Those of you with part time after school nanny...

[elliott]

How to you work out differing hours in term time and holidays?
Is it possible to find someone to work less than 10 hours a week? Can you just have a term time contract and extra hours in the holidays?

I am still trying to find a solution to ds1's afterschool and school holiday care. He is 4 and I would prefer for him to be cared for at home after preschool than go to afterschool club 2 days a week. But I just don't know if it is possible to find someone to do such limited hours - basically 2x3 hours a week, plus a few weeks of holiday care 2-3 full days a week. i don't really want to employ someone year round when we can cover 8-10 weeks of the school holidays ourselves.
Anyone with any advice or in a similar position? And what about all the tax/NI pallaver - seems a bit ott since I only need someone for about the same hours as my cleaner....

I advertised for someone in the local paper.

Or an au pair is the other option f you have room?

Hi Elliot,

we have a nany who is happy to work different hours in term-time and holidays, but at teh moment dd2 is only at the school nursery 2 and a half hours a day so the difference between term and holiday is not taht great. Most mornings I drop dds off at school and then nanny picks up dd2 at lunch time. On the days when I can't drop them off the nanny arrives early and takes them and then does cleaning/ironing for us. We are very lukcky to have found someone so flexible - she's not qualified and I doubt qualified nannies would be quite so keen on this arrangement. I got her from Gumtree.com - you could also try Simply Childcare - check out their website - they tend to have adverts for more flexible arrangements.

We have different hours in term time and in holidays. They are worked out on an annual basis then a composite weekly salary worked out that gives a constant rate of pay all year round.

If you do this you need to have something in the contract about settling up at the end of employement if the employee owes you or you owe them money based on the split of hours in the last year of employment.

\link{http://www.afterschoolnannies.com/after school nannies} Camme accross this on net and this-

nannies

After school nannies again

The agency fee for afterschoolnannies is eyewatering!

If you are in London advertise in Simply Childcare or on Gumtree!

thanks folks. talkinghorse, what kind of contractual arrangement do you have?
I am a long way from London (newcastle!) and we just don't have the same kind of market for nannies that there is down there. No space for an au pair either! There is basically one agency in town; I am sure there are ways of finding people (maybe students doing nursery nurse training) but I am struggling to find anything through word of mouth. I would be happy with unqualified as long as they were reliable and kind - ds1 really doesn't need a whole lot of input as long as he has his lego
I suppose I don't really want to pay someone for more than their four weeks of holiday entitlement - we really would only need about 3 or 4 weeks of school holidays covered.

elliot, I actually didnt have a contractual arrangement.

But you can write up your own, or I am sure find one on the internet.

I had a contrat with my Au Pairs which I made up myslef. No idea where it is now though.

If you'd be happy with a nursery nurse student (some are worth their weight in gold and some are just scarily dreadful) then call the local collage and ask a tutot for recommendations and to put up an ad. You'd be best with someone on the 2 yr BTEC or CACHE diploma courses.

Message withdrawn

thanks for the further ideas - bumping for the working week!
Talkinghorse (again) - did you just pay cash in hand then? I've wondered about this as it seems the obvious solution for something with such few hours as I need but feel nervous about it...

Ok I know its not as exciting as David Cameron but surely there's a few more people in this situation out there...

Hi Elliot,
Any chance of pinching some staff from the local nursery? If you go to this particular nursery, make sure that you don't have any penalties in your contract. But, if you don't have a contract with them, it's usually a pretty economical solution as the nursery probably pays them little more than minimum wage, so not that difficult to make your job look attractive.

Have you thought of using a childminder? I know you are hoping to find someone to look after him at home, but I think with such limited hours you might have more options that way?

You probably know this - but the tricky thing about needing so few (but regular) hours is that someone doing your job is very likely to be doing (and need to do) at least one other job, and then you're into that luck-of-the-draw dovetailing thing of looking for the exact person who's looking for you. Also, of course, afterschool time is very much what people use au pairs for, so it's much harder to find ad hoc cover for those hours than for the morning, for instance (when there are a lot of bored au pairs wanting to pick up an extra hour or two).

Presumably you've had a look at the \link{http://newcastle.gumtree.com/newcastle/employment-wanted_1446_1.html\Newcastle gumtree}?

or maybe someone would like to share their nanny? - have you looked at the sharingcare.co.uk website?

Thanks, bink. Yes I have rung round all potential childminders who do pick up from ds1's school (only about half a dozen) and all the good ones are booked up. Plus I kind of decided that he might as well go to afterschool club as a childminders, if he can't come home.
Yes, I think the matching of hours with someone else is tricky - I guess I need to try harder with all my potential contacts as it might work better if I can team up with someone else to make a whole job (I know so few who use this kind of childcare, that's why I'm struggling with it really).
Thanks for the link to gumtree - looks a bit sparse for local childcare but worth keeping an eye on I guess.

Anyone else? Must be a few more nanny users with school age kids out there....