A question: What annoys you about finding childcare?

[ambu]

Hi everyone.

I'm new to mumsnet, but am am an entrepreneur looking to build a service that makes it easier to find and book childcare (both nannies and babysitters) online and/or via an app.

What I would love to know is:

How do you typically find care for your kids?
How often do you need childcare?
At what age would you start to look (if at all!) for professional childcare?
What annoys you about the current 'finding and using childcare' experience?

If anyone has a few minutes to help out then it would be super appreciated!

Thanks.

Hello...

Should have clarified - with scenario 2 the agency is taking £2 per hour commission, so ends up with £30 per year from this particular sitter - half what it it would be under scenario 1.

OutragedFromLeeds - yes, you've got it exactly. Shouldn't it be right that the more someone uses a service, the more they should be paying for it? Otherwise the people who use it infrequently are just subsidising the heavy users.

If the price per hour is fair for both parties - and realistically, an extra £2 per hour shouldn't be a dealbreaker for the parent if the experience is so much better - then one would hope that the parent would continue to use it.

I imagine there must be loads of parents who have just let their subscriptions lapse, and are paying £15 per month for nothing. Yes, that's good for the agency's bottom line, but it's not sustainable, and generates ill feeling when the parent finds out. Think of how people feel about things like magazine subscriptions or Amazon Prime, eh?

If a service provided the DBS checks, then that would be great for all parties, but I know that they don't come cheap!

'Shouldn't it be right that the more someone uses a service, the more they should be paying for it? Otherwise the people who use it infrequently are just subsidising the heavy users'

Of course, but that just means that the heavy users will go elsewhere. As a business don't you want the heavy users? It's a lovely, fair idea. It's just not a good business plan.

'and realistically, an extra £2 per hour shouldn't be a dealbreaker for the parent if the experience is so much better'

This is true, but how is your service so much better? What are you actually offering? It seems to be the same service that Sitters provides, but for £2ph more.

A business whose client base is 'people who won't use the service very much' is going to struggle!

Of course people are annoyed by Amazon Prime/Gym memberships/Magazine subscriptions that they don't use, but that is a successful business model. People still subscribe to the gym/amazon/magazines don't they? Are you interested in this more as a charity type thing i.e. you're doing a good deed and if you make a profit that's a bonus?

Re: charity, not at all. The idea is for this to be a thriving and profitable business, but one that is fair to both sides of the market (sitter + parent).

Here are a few ideas of why it would be better:
-Higher quality sitters, all DBS/First Aid trained
-'Highly educated' sitters (potentially)
-Better payments facilities
-Curated list of sitters, as opposed to the huge (and quite overbearing!) list that seems to be on most sites
-Different languages catered for
-Ease of use

My view is that if you can make the experience good enough for the parents, then even if they are heavy users, they will continue to come back, and be happy to pay slightly more because of the consistently high quality.

There are plenty of services (non childcare) out there that charge more than the alternative, but people are happy to pay because it just makes there life a whole lot easier.

Also, with these other agencies, I don't believe that they actually vet the nannies themselves, i.e. meet them to ensure that they aren't just good on paper, but they stack up in real life.

Do you think that would be a sufficient selling point to ask a parent to pay a bit more?

When I do temp nursery work, I get paid for just the hours I work. The client tells the agency they want someone and the agency sends someone - maybe the first time that person has been to that nursery, maybe they have been before.
The agency sorts out the payment sides of things. They take money from the client and they pay some of it to the worker, holding back their commission and taxes.

How would your service be any different to that? Different client sure but you are doing the same thing, providing experienced, trained person to provide care of children.

I have a zero hour contract with the agency. I am however still an employee of the agency. How would your babysitters not be employees of your agency?

Sitters meets people, least they did many years back when I applied.

'Higher quality sitters, all DBS/First Aid trained'

Are you going to sort this then? Or do they need to come already checked and trained? Why would these high quality sitters come to you? What are you offering that other agencies don't? Earlier on you were talking about students and young professionals....I wouldn't term them 'higher quality', when someone like Sitters uses all childcare professionals. In one breath you talk about these guys and girls in their 20's who want some extra cash....the next breath you've got higher quality sitters?!

''Highly educated' sitters (potentially)'

That's nonsense, unless they are highly educated in childcare. A PhD in Maths does not make someone a better sitter! It's totally irrelevant.

'Different languages catered for'

That's a bit pie in the sky! If someone wants a French sitter, but you don't have any local French sitters are you going to bring one in from far away? Or you just mean if there is a French family and a French sitter locally it will be a happy coincidence? I would put money on that being the case at ALL agencies.

'-Better payments facilities
-Curated list of sitters, as opposed to the huge (and quite overbearing!) list that seems to be on most sites
-Ease of use'

They'd all be good if you can significantly improve on the current system.

Interestingly Sitters don't require a DBS check, so that could be a big selling point for you. They do a face to face interview with each Sitter though. Are you planning in doing that?

'My view is that if you can make the experience good enough for the parents, they will continue to come back, and be happy to pay slightly more'.

I agree with you 100%. I just seriously doubt whether you (or anyone) can offer this.

You can charge a fortune to the parent and pay the nanny well and make a profit for yourself.

You can offer competitive rates to the parent and pay the nanny well and make a small/negligible profit for yourself.

You can offer competitive rates to the parent, shaft the nanny and make a profit for yourself.

As evidenced from your example above, you can't do all three. If the nanny gets £10, the parent pays £12 then you earn a, not guaranteed, £2ph and that's not enough for a thriving and profitable business.

After someone has had a sitter from your service/app, what is there to stop them arranging things direct with the sitter?
Wonder how the other services deal with that one.

'I don't believe that they actually vet the nannies themselves'

Sitters do.

I think it is great that you are trying to come up with a concept which could work better than those that already exist.
There are problems though that need to be overcome.

Another problem - how would parents find out about the service? The advertising budget would need to be big to make parents aware of it.

For those of you that have used a babysitter through an 'offline' referral (i.e. friend/colleague/neighbour), how often do you actually use them? And how many other families do you think they sit for?
Whenever we needed / wanted to go out
Generally, our sitters didn't sit for anyone else, but occasionally we used someone who sat for friends of ours, if our sitters (different ones at different times) couldn't do it.

*How about students / young professionals in a large city as being your kind of market that are trying to get set up?

If sure that there are thousands of girls/guys in their 20s that would happily be paid £8-10 per hour (at the more premium end) on a weekday evening...

Sure that these kinds of sitters would be happy to work several evenings a week*

Well, yes, I know students who would be happy to earn this...although transport can be an issue (a taxi home would seriously eat into earnings, and students are less likely to have their own cars).
When we were of an age to need sitters though, there's no way we could have afforded £45 on top of the cost of the evening out though ~ therein lies your issue.

'If sure that there are thousands of girls/guys in their 20s that would happily be paid £8-10 per hour (at the more premium end) on a weekday evening...'

I'm sure there are. But then we come back to quality. How many of those people are DBS checked? Insured? First Aid trained? Ofsted registered? Have experience? Well, my 18 yr old ds can say yes to all those, (except OFSTED registered, obviously, as he's not working as a Nanny or CM, he's a student) and my 16 yr old dd can also say yes to them all except the DBS as she's not 18 yet. It's not that unusual.

'Highly educated' sitters (potentially) - why would this matter in a babysitter ? They will be sitting on your sofa while your child is asleep.

Your teenagers have nanny/childcare insurance?! I thought that would be quite unusual, but interesting to know that's standard for teenagers now....

And they both have sole charge experience with young children? And that's fairly common among teenagers?

Things have clearly changed since my teenage days!

I think any app should just be a facilitator. It would be too tricky to work out a cut of how many hours the babysitter worked, what they should be paid etc. Getting involved in the payment process could just get too messy for you if some parents wouldn't pay (had this a few times as a teenager).There should be a couple of tiers for payment.

First, the babysitters should be charged a fee for setting up their profiles and listing their details including their expected rates of pay (you should not try to dictate this). The fee should be equivalent to the average fee for two hours of babysitting (eg £20) and then a small subscription fee each month renewed by an in-app purchase.

The second is there should be in-app purchases for each transaction. Free for parents to join, free for them to search and see expected pay etc but they pay a fee of around £3 anytime they want to initiate contact with a potential sitter, regardless of whether they decide to hire them or not. Otherwise you'd just get parents and sitters arranging things 'behind your back' so to speak. Hopefully the volume of transactions would make it a paying proposition.

Good luck :)

It all sounds like a huge faff for everyone concerned.

Some people I know get sitters from local FB pages or sites set up where lists are posted - stuff for sale, childcare offered and wanted, a bit like the classifieds in newspapers. I always just asked around and got teenagers through friends and neighbours. Most of the time when my DCs babysit they go to the same families, and inherit them one after the other, and then get business from those families' friends. I always hired teens. I don't know anyone who was so fussy they wanted students or people with background checks, etc.

'How would your babysitters not be employees of your agency?' This is crucial. You need to sit down with a solicitor and pay him or her to sort out this kind of detail. You would need a cast iron waiver of responsibility and the correct company type all nice and legal.

I worked as a freelance nanny in the US for a while and got jobs through an online service. The understanding was that nannies were self employed.

The service was free to nannies but parents seeking a nanny paid $$ to join. When nannies registered (and posted a profile detailing any special education or training and past experience, plus references) they were invited to have the service perform one of three levels of criminal background check - basic, medium, advanced, costing $20, 40, and $60 respectively. A criminal background check on some level was highly recommended.

In addition, nannies could have a standard profile feature that was free or for a small fee ($20 iirc) could have their profile displayed prominently. They could also pay to have access to what previous employers said about them. Prospective employers could message nannies on a messaging feature on the site, or nannies could provide an email address and/or phone number for communication, or both. After the nannies were contacted it was up to them to sell themselves well at an interview and take whatever precautions they felt necessary. You had to be 19 to join.

The beauty of it from the owner's pov was the upselling.

The attraction to nannies was that they could still get a job without buying any of the extras and just getting the basic background check if that was all they wanted to invest, and depending on their skills and experience. There were several pages where they could tick boxes with various skills or experiences listed -- experience dealing with children with asthma, dealing with twins, dealing with allergy, epi pens, you name it, it was on a list. Nannies could also write a few paragraphs about themselves and post a photo. Parents with special requests could look at profiles that matched their special criteria and thus not waste time.

Both nannies and parents posted what sort of hourly or weekly financial arrangement they had in mind and parents also posted the hours they required, and the days. Nannies had access to all listings and parents had access to all nannies.

@Cindy34 - the main difference compared to the situation you described is that the parents would actually get to choose which sitter they wanted from the agency, they wouldn't just ring up and be given any random sitter who was available.

You would also be able to do all of this (choose sitter, times, payments etc.) online, and wouldn't need to phone up.

That's an improved service right?

'Higher quality sitters, all DBS/First Aid trained'

Are you going to sort this then? Or do they need to come already checked and trained? Why would these high quality sitters come to you? What are you offering that other agencies don't? Earlier on you were talking about students and young professionals....I wouldn't term them 'higher quality', when someone like Sitters uses all childcare professionals. In one breath you talk about these guys and girls in their 20's who want some extra cash....the next breath you've got higher quality sitters?!

Answer: It depends, and I'm not sure yet. The motive for a high quality sitter that wasn't busy 100% of the time would be that it is yet another channel to get business. Perhaps what I'm saying is that a student or young professional could be very 'high quality', but just doesn't have that track record of 5+ years in childcare.

''Highly educated' sitters (potentially)'

That's nonsense, unless they are highly educated in childcare. A PhD in Maths does not make someone a better sitter! It's totally irrelevant.

Answer: In many case yes (of course you are right), but do you think that there is some bias amongst parents to want their children to be looked after by babysitters who might bring something extra, or could have a skill that they could impress a kid with?

'Different languages catered for'

That's a bit pie in the sky! If someone wants a French sitter, but you don't have any local French sitters are you going to bring one in from far away? Or you just mean if there is a French family and a French sitter locally it will be a happy coincidence? I would put money on that being the case at ALL agencies.

Answer: No, certainly wouldn't bring one in. I think a service like this would work best in a city like London, and so you would have speakers of all major European languages 'on the books', so a French parent could choose a French speaking sitter, and so on. You would recruit sitters so that these languages were covered.

'-Better payments facilities
-Curated list of sitters, as opposed to the huge (and quite overbearing!) list that seems to be on most sites
-Ease of use'

They'd all be good if you can significantly improve on the current system.

Interestingly Sitters don't require a DBS check, so that could be a big selling point for you. They do a face to face interview with each Sitter though. Are you planning in doing that?

Answer: If that's what it takes, then yes.

'My view is that if you can make the experience good enough for the parents, they will continue to come back, and be happy to pay slightly more'.

I agree with you 100%. I just seriously doubt whether you (or anyone) can offer this.

You can charge a fortune to the parent and pay the nanny well and make a profit for yourself.

You can offer competitive rates to the parent and pay the nanny well and make a small/negligible profit for yourself.

You can offer competitive rates to the parent, shaft the nanny and make a profit for yourself.

As evidenced from your example above, you can't do all three. If the nanny gets £10, the parent pays £12 then you earn a, not guaranteed, £2ph and that's not enough for a thriving and profitable business.

Answer: a commission of 10-20% is enough for quite a lot of businesses, and as discussed, any more than that may mean that there is a greater incentive for the sitter/parent to go direct and not use your service.
I think a thriving business could be built on those numbers, but it would certainly have to start off small.

@Cindy34 -Q: after someone has had a sitter from your service/app, what is there to stop them arranging things direct with the sitter?
Wonder how the other services deal with that one.

You just have to make your service better enough than the alternative (phone calls, cash etc.) so that people will pay for it.

That is the typical solution for other sites, and also, having a high volume of transactions going through helps.

Hi @BackForGood - interesting questions, I've responded below:
For those of you that have used a babysitter through an 'offline' referral (i.e. friend/colleague/neighbour), how often do you actually use them? And how many other families do you think they sit for?
Whenever we needed / wanted to go out

How often is/was this generally?
Generally, our sitters didn't sit for anyone else, but occasionally we used someone who sat for friends of ours, if our sitters (different ones at different times) couldn't do it.
What this suggests to me is that those sitters would have sat for other people, if there was an easy service that allowed them to get more business

*How about students / young professionals in a large city as being your kind of market that are trying to get set up?

If sure that there are thousands of girls/guys in their 20s that would happily be paid £8-10 per hour (at the more premium end) on a weekday evening...

Sure that these kinds of sitters would be happy to work several evenings a week*

Well, yes, I know students who would be happy to earn this...although transport can be an issue (a taxi home would seriously eat into earnings, and students are less likely to have their own cars).
When we were of an age to need sitters though, there's no way we could have afforded £45 on top of the cost of the evening out though ~ therein lies your issue.

Good point. This being a more premium service, I think it is catering to parents in large cities for whom an additional £45 on top of the cost of the evening is a price they're willing to pay. In terms of the transport issue, does anyone know how this is dealt with in London? Does the parent have to pay typically?

'If sure that there are thousands of girls/guys in their 20s that would happily be paid £8-10 per hour (at the more premium end) on a weekday evening...'

I'm sure there are. But then we come back to quality. How many of those people are DBS checked? Insured? First Aid trained? Ofsted registered? Have experience? Well, my 18 yr old ds can say yes to all those, (except OFSTED registered, obviously, as he's not working as a Nanny or CM, he's a student) and my 16 yr old dd can also say yes to them all except the DBS as she's not 18 yet. It's not that unusual.

I imagine barely any of them are DBS checked. This would have to be part of the procedure, and perhaps the cost of the check would be taken out of their first payment.

'Highly educated' sitters (potentially) - why would this matter in a babysitter ? confused They will be sitting on your sofa while your child is asleep

*See above point to @OutragedFromLeeds

@mimishimmi - here's my answers to your points:
I think any app should just be a facilitator. It would be too tricky to work out a cut of how many hours the babysitter worked, what they should be paid etc. Getting involved in the payment process could just get too messy for you if some parents wouldn't pay (had this a few times as a teenager).There should be a couple of tiers for payment.

EXACTLY! Given that with this service the payments would have to be upfront, there wouldn't be the issue of a parent withholding payment!

First, the babysitters should be charged a fee for setting up their profiles and listing their details including their expected rates of pay (you should not try to dictate this). The fee should be equivalent to the average fee for two hours of babysitting (eg £20) and then a small subscription fee each month renewed by an in-app purchase.

Interesting, but it would surely dissuade a sitter from signing up if they had to pay before even getting any bookings?

The second is there should be in-app purchases for each transaction. Free for parents to join, free for them to search and see expected pay etc but they pay a fee of around £3 anytime they want to initiate contact with a potential sitter, regardless of whether they decide to hire them or not. Otherwise you'd just get parents and sitters arranging things 'behind your back' so to speak. Hopefully the volume of transactions would make it a paying proposition.

I'm not a fan of in-app purchases, as I think they devalue your core product offering. In terms of the 'initiate contact' fee, from a parent's point of view, wouldn't you feel a little cheated if you paid to initiate contact and the sitter wasn't available?

Good luck smile

@mathanxiety - that's really interesting about your experience.

I'm sure that system works really well for a nanny agency, but I'm taking about a more temp system, probably around babysitting.

I can understand why a jobseeker (i.e. nanny) would pay $ to join a service, because they are probably going to get a relatively long-term contract out of it, but if it's just for temp evening work, then do you think there would still be the same incentive for someone to pay to join a service like that?

A better system than, say, Sitters, would need to address two issues: reliability of supply and reliability of payment. As soon as parents have a bad experience with a nanny/babysitter not turning up (even with the best excuse in the world such as illness or an accident) they will at best lose faith in the agency or at worst rubbish them to anyone who will listen. So there needs to be a backup system. Then there are the parents who mess their sitters around, cancelling at the last minute, cutting or switching hours, refusing to pay or paying less than agreed. An agency will need to address this - guarantee the sitters the pay for the bookings they take, or similarly they will be deserted by their sitters, and equally criticised on the childcare grapevine. FWIW I think there are two babysitting communities around here - parents who are fussy and will only leave their child with a childcare professional (and then preferably one well known to them) and those who are either less well off or less fussy who tend to opt for a teenager who will accept a pocket money fee.

Thanks Jinxxx. I feel that there is room in the market for a service to address both of those issues. With any service with two customers (sitters and parents), it's vital to be fair to both parties. IMO, both sitters and parents would welcomingly come to a service that they felt was fair, and a service that favoured one side would be unpopular with the other.

In terms of the two communities you mention, the kind of service I'm mentioning would definitely fall into the first category. For parents who currently leave their children with a neighbour or local teenager for whatever reason (financial, ease of use, returning a favour etc.), that is a perfect arrangement - there is almost no way of improving it.

It's the first type of parent that I feel would be catered for by a service that provided consistently high quality babysitters at short notice, and which handled all of the issues (no-shows, payment issues, reviews, checks etc.) that have previously been mentioned.

I'm curious. For the parents here that fall into that first category, is this a service that you would use?