Pickup and drop-off services

[Nickname1980]

I don't really know where to start looking for this kind of help, actually! I wondered if you could advise what kind of thing I need.

I'm looking for someone to pickup my almost-3-year-old from nursery and bring him back home - that's it (pickup time is 5pm). Perhaps the occasional bit of other help, too, but that isn't the major requirement.

His nursery is about 15mins drive / or 30mins walk away from my house. The reason I'd like the help is that I'll have a newborn baby soon.

Does this sort of help actually exist?? If it does, what should I be looking for when I look through ads?

It does, and you want a babysitter (not a nanny or a childminder) but for such a very short time it might not be worth someone's while to do it as a regular job.

We had an occasional babysitter who mainly did evenings out for us but did the odd nursery pickup when I had to go away for the day for work. We spotted her on Childcare.co.uk but I already knew her in fact (she worked part time where I worked but before she retrained she'd done nursery nursing so was a fabulous find, she was doing the odd bit of babysitting to top up her part time wage).

We now have a new babysitter who does evenings mainly again, but is going to do school pickup one day a week for DS who starts in September and she'll bring him to our house, feed him tea, probably hear him read and plonk him in front of Paw Patrol.

Yep I am a nanny who has done that sort of thing for years around my other work, so days I am not working I would do evenings with another family, or if I finish before they need someone to collect from nursery would go and do the pick up and then back to theirs etc. Do you just want someone to pick up and drop back to you or someone to do that and then stay and help out with end of the day routine? If the first one of the staff at nursery may be happy to help out. If the second then maybe a childcare college student looking for experience. So contact local colleges, local netmums page, childcare.co.uk etc

Thanks both, this is super helpful!

Mainly the pickup. Only part time (3 days a week). But in the first few weeks of the new baby, someone to stay and help out with tea-time, etc, might be good too. My DH will be working until toddler's bedtime, pretty much, and he returns to work v quickly after the new baby is born.

Is Childcare.co.uk the best place to advertise, drspouse and asg198? (But good idea about one of the nursery workers! I will try them!). What do you think of Gumtree?

What rate of pay should I offer? (I'm London, if it makes a difference.)

Thank you so much for this advice so far! Very useful!

I would try childcare and netmums both free to advertise (childcare you will need to pay for people to message you/you to message people) I would charge £10-£12 a hour and depending on how far nursery was from yours poss mileage for the journey back to yours at 45p a mile. As I assume this is only a temp thing then someone reg as self employed would work as they can invoice you for the hours worked etc.

You could try gumtree but be prepared to get a lot of no good/not relevant replies. Be clear on what you are looking for in terms of experience/qualifications etc as you will want them to drive your child then ob a clean license with business insurance is essential. A local au pair may also be interested although most would prob be busy with their host families at that time, is their another parent at the nursery who could drop them back for you for a few weeks and then later on you re pay the favour by sharing pick ups with them.

I would definitely try the local colleges esp ones with childcare courses as I know lots of the students that studied when I did would of jumped at the chance of earning a bit of extra cash while getting experience (esp if you could offer a little new born experience too, say while you did toddler bedtime sometimes they could look after the baby) and you could offer them less in exchange for a reference when they finish with you.