After school/holiday nanny

[Purplelemon7]

Does anyone have one or do this type of role? Would love to hear from you. I will probably need an after school & holidays nanny for when my 2 children (who are a year apart) start nursery and reception. Would need someone ideally around 15 hours per week but we could stretch up to 20 hours if we are struggling to find someone and if they are happy to do a bit of housekeeping) and full time for 12 weeks a year during school holidays. As my kids would be going to a school that’s a 15 min drive away would also need to be a driver so that might preclude some candidates. I’ve worked out very roughly that if I paid the rate I pay my full time nanny they would get a monthly set salary of around £1300-1900 gross in outer London. An au pair won’t be possible as we don’t have the space for anyone to live with us at the moment. I have a university near me and I sometimes see local students looking for childcare work. I’m worried that my requirements (driver, low weekly hours, full time in holidays) might make it very difficult for me to find someone to fill this role. I would love to hear others experiences just so I can get set my own expectations realistically now, thank you so much!

A Nwoc may be interested

Have you contacted agencies

Would that be over 5 days?

I think a NWOC might be your best bet like @Blondeshavemorefun has suggested.

Why not try a childminder?

Childminders can pick up from school, some offer an evening meal and will do school holiday care.

Have you looked at Koru Kids? They may have someone who fits your bill - a student but one who drives.

It is possible to find someone who meets that criteria but it takes time - it took me something like 4 months to find someone- and in that time I had only seen one other candidate (who was a flake). In terms of pay you are looking at probably a higher hourly rate than FT nanny (in London I paid I think £15ph a couple of years ago) and I assumed slightly more FT weeks than we really needed, and agreed longer hours than we're ever really needed, to beef up the pay.

Another option is students but I think you may struggle to find a student who wants 5 days per week. If you can bear the organisation (and step in if it goes wrong) you may find having 2 or 3 students on a rota works, though personally I think that sort of thing is better for older children.

Thanks for responses.

Childminder is unlikely to work as I haven’t seen any childminders locally that provide pick up services from the schools I'm looking at probably because they are prep schools that have wrap around care - I may consider using this option but I like the idea of the kids being home sooner so I want to explore the nanny option too.

With NWOC my reservation is that I have two small kids (they would be 3 and 4 year old) who would be at different schools and require pick up. That’s quite a lot so I’m not sure it would be easy for someone who also has their own child?

Interesting to know that the rate might need to be higher than normal. We could do 9 hours over 3 days and manage 2days ourselves so student could work and if they weren’t keen on increasing hours over holidays we could use the school holiday clubs.

A competent nanny would easily be able to look after a 3&4 plus own child

We've just got an after school nanny it wasn't without stress however. We have found someone massively flexible which has been a godsend

Honestly, I think it’s a case of advertising early and crossing your fingers that the right nanny with find your advert. When are you hoping they’ll start?

Seems like a decent salary for the amount of hours they’d be doing.
I’d be happy to do it!

I'm a NWOC who works as an after-school and school holiday nanny. I work just under 5h, 4 days a week in term time (go in early to chuck some washing on, prep dinner, uniforms etc) and close to 11h a day in the school holidays. I take my little girl with me and it works really well because I can give them loads of flexibility with holidays, sickness etc in exchange for bringing her along. In my previous role I had my daughter (5mo) and a 2yo and 4yo and it wasn't an issue, after nearly 20y experience it's definitely manageable!