Talk to me about babysitting groups - good, bad or terrible idea

[ruthietoothie]

I've been thinking for a while about trying to set up a babysitting group with my local friends. We don't have any family nearby and think Swops with friends might be a good one to get out as a couple more than once a year!! (Not quite that bad but nearly).

I was thinking I could see who was interested, and then make some tickets which people could use to exchange sitting. But I can't decide if this will work or just be terrible?

Idea would be that rather than straight Swops you would sit for a ticket and then could use the ticket to ask someone (anyone in sitting circle) to sit for you...

Has anyone done anything like this? How did you work it and did it wrk?

Tia

Back in ye olden dayes when my kids were little, the babysitting circle was a godsend. As far as I can remember we had little cards in denomination of one hour and half an hour. A list of members, showing their children's names and dates of birth, address and contact numbers was circulated. The list would also have brief notes if the member had preferences (not after midnight/not available on Fridays etc). Double time was paid after midnight. We also had a monthly coffee morning so that pre-schoolers could play and meet the people that would potentially be babysitting them. I often wonder why it's not a common arrangement these days and came to the conclusion that we're all a lot more suspicious of other people these days. I have to say that nothing untoward ever took place in the 7-8 years I was a member of our group.

We tried it on our street. It worked ok for a while, we just remembered if we owed someone so when they asked, the person who owed them would do their best to cover it rather than tickets.

One or two people totally took the piss, saying they'd be back at 10 but staying out till 1am on a work night and never being available to do any babysitting themselves. Then someone else got an au pair so didn't need to participate any more and in the end we all just ended up paying their au pair if we needed it!

So I'd definitely give it a go as it did work for a while but set some ground rules about how late people are willing to stay up.

Thanks so much, v useful advice. I'm keen to give it a go if a little nervous that's a complete non starter....

Hiya I'm not a mum but I babysit for people locally. Some of my friends who I babysit for run a babysitting circle and I'm sure they use something like this website...
www.babysittercircle.co.uk

I think it's all online then so you know who owes what etc... I know that my friend often uses me if she hasn't built up many tokens for a while. She said though that the circle works great. They all know each other from playgroups etc... good luck

I'm in one and it's brilliant we just use a basic homemade token - 1 per half hour. What works best for us was agreeing it was only meant for shorter, early sits so ideally 11pm finish but definitely nothing after 11:30pm - ideal for meal, cinema, drink at the local etc but if you want to go out partying then pay someone who won't mind staying late!

I've never heard of this! Fab idea!!