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.

@mathanxiety - I'm not 100% clear on what you are saying about a fee. What I was suggesting is a commission on each booking, so a babysitter would never have to pay any fees to advertose, there would just be a cut of each booking that went to the agency.

@lonecatwithkitten - if someone logs in to another third party service with Facebook, this doesn't mean that their profile can be hacked though.

The idea behind logging in with a Facebook account (not just for a nanny service) is firstly to make the signing up process easier, but also for the user to be able to see which of their friends are using the service. Of course it helps the business understand their customers better, but I have always valued the ease that it provides.

@miterra - other than the obvious frustration at finding that you were being charged £25 per month, what was your experience like at findababysitter?

Ps can I also just thank everyone for their thoughts - lots of interesting opinions and experiences!

What's to stop parents booking the babysitter direct at a future date?
Paying a monthly registration fee encouraged parents to use sitters.
With you they could use you as a recourse only when nannies you had previously introduced were busy.

I don't see the advantage to me of seeing which of my friends uses a service. To me, the advantage of FB is all on the side of the service.

'Seeing reviews my friends have left' -- I don't live my life on FB and neither do my friends. We don't conduct our relationships via FB or reveal minutiae of our lives there. We call or text or talk.

I don't leave reviews. I have looked through some of my friends' pages just to see what sort of services along your lines any of them seem to have used or left reviews for and I came up completely empty handed. This is not because there is an untapped market. It is because those who have a busy socialising schedule have had their babysitting sorted since they first had babies, and those who just go out occasionally borrow other people's babysitters. Also, they are all aged mid 30s to 50ish and definitely have disposable income, and children, but prefer not to advertise or hint at the extent of the income or their lifestyle -- so you won't find reviews of the gardening services or the cleaners or the house painting services, etc. that they use. The only hint at social status you will see is references to their children's sports teams.