Need a nanny, where to start?

[mumhum]

Hi, we are looking for a part time nanny to start in November. How successful have people been with childcare.co.uk or nannyjob.co.uk ? Should I also try a few agencies? Local paper website only has adverts for nursery nurses. And as for a contract, should I try and do this myself along with a nanny tax company, or would an agency cover that sort of thing in their fee? Agencies seem to want about £1k for passing on CV's. Any advice appreciated.

childcare.co.uk is great - you can filter for exactly what you want (driver, own car, full time, part time, live in, live out etc) - try that first as agencies cost a fortune for very little

I use payefornannies who are much cheaper than nannytax. they'll give you a contract (and amend it as you want) and for an extra £20 per year you get access to their employment lawyer, I've never needed it but useful to know.

a good agency is worth its weight in gold. Trouble is, I've yet to find a good agency, and their fee will be closer to £2k by the time VAT is added. They'll lie to you, waste your time and send you candidates who are unable to do either your hours, location or some other fundamental of the job.

Since you have the time, put an ad up on childcare.co.uk and take your time. It will be full of timewasters but there will also be some good ones.

I also use PAYE for nannies and they're brilliant and will provide a contract and work out holiday allowance for part time etc et.

What I did with childcare.co.uk is put up a profile with a lot of information - exact job description, salary etc etc, then I used their search function to narrow down criteria (in my case live out, part time, own car, full driving licence). I messaged about 20 nannies who matched those criteria, about 10 replied, I interviewed 3 and appointed 1. It was all remarkably straightforward! They have reduced the number of messages you can send per day which has cut down on the spam a lot.

PS when I messaged them it was quite brief - "dear x, I am looking for a nanny and wondered if you might be interested - please look at my profile for more information" kind of thing

nannycover.com