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.

'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?'

NO, because the jobs are not really temp, they are one nighters basically, and a babysitter working on that basis would find it far easier to suit herself and find work by word of mouth.

A babysitter who envisioned making a living or a significant amount of money from babysitting would be advertising as a night nanny or a nanny with nighttime availability. Young women who want to make money at night have plenty of other options in restaurants, pubs, etc. where they wouldn't have to deal with annoying children, or nappies, or children who were sick, or getting themselves taxis around the city, or dealing with people who said they would be back at 1 am and rolled in at 4, or forgot to take out cash, or whose cheques bounced.

And the service I signed up for was free to nannies. A nanny could chance her arm and do without the criminal background check, even the cheapest and most basic that would show up only the fact that you had divorced or had been sent to prison some time.

Your issue here is getting enough of a fleet of babysitters aboard to make the service attractive to parents, thus giving them a choice. You have to make it free to join for babysitters. It's like a dating service where women join free. They are the product you are luring the paying punters in with. You can upsell once they are all in. But you can't erect a threshold that would put off people who wouldn't have to pay to get a foot in elsewhere.

And imo a parent who frequently needs babysitting at short notice would have some arrangement already made with their nanny or au pair or a friend's nanny or au pair or a nursery worker who did nighttime work on top of her day thing, or a nursery worker's friend.

The lifestyle that allows for frequent outings at night would cost money -- you are right to assume parents in this category would not mind forking over £45/60-100 for a service, but having that sort of money would signify (to me) that they would already have their childcare sorted.

I think you should be looking at more of a 'once off' market. For instance, short term emergency babysitting for people who are having a baby and have no other options for childcare besides knocking at a neighbour's door. I have done this for a neighbour who had to accompany her H to the hospital at 3am, and have taken in children whose mother suffered a bee sting on the school run and had a reaction that took her to A&E. My mum in her 70s picked up a neighbour's children from school, supervised homework, cooked them dinner, and got them off to bed when the mum and dad were both delayed separately by cancelled flights. I have been in a the position where I even contacted a doula service to see if I could arrange prompt arrival of someone to take care of a 5 yo and a 2 yo in the event of a sudden departure for hospital to have DC3.

You don't really have two customers. The parents are your customers. The babysitters are bait.

However, reflecting on the short term aspect, apart from the case where obv you know you are going to have a baby but you just don't know what date or time, medical emergencies really can't be planned ahead for. I don't know anyone aside from people whose family members have already known medical conditions who might want to use a service like this, plus they are likely to have plans, and plans B and C too, already in place.

Top tip for anyone wanting to find a qualified and dbs cleared babysitter at short notice- ring your local nurseries- they will be able to pass on your details to the staff

I am someone who has used Sitters and Emergency Childcare for babysitting and emergency nannies. Both have meet the individuals they send all of them are DBS checked and have current first aid certificates. Both try to send me the person I ask for on a repeat booking, most of my babysitters have been primary school teachers on maternity leave.
I also employ agency workers in my business and a fault I can see with your model is that you may fall foul of agency worker regulations and whilst I am happy to complete the reams of paperwork for the highly trained professional staff I use in my business I most certainly don't want to do that for my babysitter.
I would not use a service that required me to log in through social media, I definitely don't want my use of babysitters potentially traceable through the cookies in social media. I actually use the sitters text service to book babysitters and have found it excellent shortest time between contacting them and getting a babysitter (who I had used before) 25 minutes.
Whilst in an ideal world I wouldn't leave my child with someone they had not meet before as a single parent running my own 24/7 business providing an emergency service sometimes I have no choice.

@lonecatwithkitten. I'm curious - why wouldn't you want to log in to such a service using facebook? Surely it is easier as you don't have to remember a password, plus you could see any shared conncections you have with both the babysitter AND any other parents who have used that sitter?

@mathanxiety - I think we are saying the same thing. A parent who only needs a babysitter for one use would rather pay per use then subscribe to a service that requires a hefty upfront fee.
In terms of the young women you mention, working in a bar /restaurant really isnt that flexible - you have a manager telling you to work various shifts, and you often don't have much choice in the matter. Isnt babysitting part time (and when you want to) more convenient?

@mathanxiety - do you think that as a parent you would use an online service to book babysitting if you didn't have a network of contacts around you that could refer other babysitters?

Part time babysitting where the sitter can take a job or leave it as she wishes in a lot of cases is not going to pay enough to warrant a fee to an agency to find the jobs. Those babysitters who are serious about making money four nights a week or more would also most likely have their own network established via nurseries or some other pipeline, or via established client families in their own local area referring them to others. By the same token, if you wanted to work four nights a week or more you could work in a restaurant. You wouldn't necessarily be stuck working a morning shift one week and an evening shift the next. Some places hire staff specifically for different shifts.

Local jobs are preferable to many sitters because nobody wants to be at the mercy of parents or public transport at odd hours to take them home, and some would have qualms about safety and also cost of taxis, or parking, or walking in certain unfamiliar neighbourhoods. So therefore many sitters who are serious about making money or who prefer the odd casual request only cast their nets in their own locality and get work by word of mouth, avoiding agency fees that way too. Babysitting doesn't pay a huge amount so costs that would get in the way of taking home the maximum you can would be a turnoff imo -- transport, parking, and agency fees.

I wouldn't use a service as I prefer to hear from people I know and whose children I know how a certain babysitter does her job. Most people I know who are parents have some sort of network they are in contact with when it comes to finding sitters, and they find them through either through nursery or CMs or au pairs or nannies they know or that their friends or their relatives know.

The first babysitter I ever had was a student who was the granddaughter of an older lady I knew. She worked out ok. I hired her maybe three times over the course of two years. Next babysitter was a 13 yo neighbour whom I first asked to sit when I was rushing to the hospital to have DD2. She worked out fine too. I hired her a few more times. The next babysitters were (1) a niece of a neighbour and then her younger sister when she went off to university, (2) an older sister of a friend of DD1's, (3) a teenage boy from across the alley whom I knew from the DCs' school, (4) DD1 took it from there..

And may I add on the subject of logging in, I would not want to have to log into a service via FB or any other social media. I like to keep the various online aspects of my life separate from each other and my privacy settings are set as high as I can make them everywhere.

Social media logins are very, very traceable in particular Facebook gradually erodes privacy settings. I would not want to risk the possibility that me booking a baby sitter could be tracked. I don't remained logged in to anything, good on line safety is logging out of every account every time to prevent misuse of your account.

@mathanxiety and @lonecatwithkitten - I'm very interested, and if I'm honest a little surprised about the log-in with facebook comments.

I'm 27, and most of my contemporaries would have no qualms about logging in with Facebook. It just seems like the natural (and easy) thing to do, and also means that you can see which of your friends are using the app at the same time. For the purposes of a babysitting service, it would mean that you could see reviews that your friends had left.

I am 42, a business owner and very aware that one false move on Facebook could have a massive adverse impact on my business.
I would suspect I am representative of your target audience in terms of age and income.

I use Facebook a bit, but generally my peers who are similar age similar income also would not log in to a service through Facebook.

What do you mean that one false move on facebook could have a massive adverse impact?

Surely using their 'log-in' service (personally) for a service like finding a babysitter would be very unlikely to have any impact on your business?

I'm 25 and hate it when things ask me to log in with Facebook. I have not used some otherwise great services because they want to link with my Facebook account. I would absolutely not log in with my Facebook account as either a babysitter or a parent to use this kind of service.
It's not an age thing. It's a common sense thing.

Very, very easy if you remain logged in for someone else to post something to your Facebook page am I intrinsically linked to my business and reputation is everything in my business.
Everything I ever post to Facebook is bland and could never ever reflect badly on my reputation.
Facebook can be amazing for businesses, but it can kill then dead as fast as it can make them. As I say my friends and I are your target audience and I am probably the biggest Facebook user of everyone I know.
Yes under 30s probably will happily log in through Facebook, but they are likely to be your one of users. Over 30 professional people are your most likely regulars these are the people whose opinions you need to follow.
95% of the people who follow my Business Facebook page are under 25, this from my research is similar for most businesses.

May make more sense to login with google account so can integrate with google calendar.
Probably better having options, so those who want to use social logins can but no one is forced to do so.

Hi,
I wanted to warn people about findababysitter.com - I thought I was paying to use it for a month and discovered they'd been taking £25 a month out of my bank account. They are refusing to refund this, even though they agree I didn't use the site outside of the one month I paid for.
They claim their terms and conditions made clear it was a monthly subscription but I know I wouldn't have agreed to it if I had seen that this was the deal.
I feel completely scammed! Just wanted to make sure no one else has the same experience.
Cheers,
M

Your market for repeat users would be older and well off and possibly professional, and would most likely not have the same attitude or user habits wrt FB that you do, at age 27. I am almost twice your age and in a similar position to LoneKitten. My DCs who are young professionals (in their early 20s at the moment) keep a very low social media profile too, with an eye to the image they project to employers and potential employers. If they had children, their income would put them in your target market.

Childcare arrangements are not part of my life any more, but if they were and I were considering using your service, the FB login would put me off. I am nodding at LK's description of her FB postings as 'bland' and posted with an eye to my image. I do not plaster details of my personal life there at all, and I make absolutely no reference to my children, and post no photos of them.

Apologies Lonecatwithkitten I got your name wrong there

Miterra stop spamming the forum with your messages. You didn't read the fine print which is oversight on your part. Accept it and move on.

@nannynick - that's very interesting about logging in with google (And syncing your calendar)

@nannynick - what's greater though, the % of people that have a gmail account or a facebook profile?
And for those that have said they wouldn't be comfortable logging in with Facebook, would you be ok logging in with your google (gmail) profile?