Hiring a cook/nanny

[DianeC2020]

Hey guys,

Just wondering if I could get some info on how I should go about hiring a cook/nanny for the kids after school. I work really long hours (8 - 6.30pm) albeit from home. I feel my kids are not really eating well because although I feed them decent food, it's always the same type of stuff and one of my children is now a vegetarian.

I wondered how I should go about hiring someone to pop in for an hour or two each evening to cook their meals? Are their agencies I should look at? Just wondered what your experiences are.

Thanks!

Yes there are agencies but you can also try advertising directly. Whether anyone is interested is anyones guess. Best of luck

Do you need childcare anyway after school? We've wrapped the two things into one and have a nanny/housekeeper who starts a few hours before picking up the children. During that time she prepares meals for the family, deals with errands, bedsheets etc. Would that work?

Thank you.

Yes, @HastaLaVistaBebe - that's exactly what would be ideal! I want to ensure I hire using the right channels. Did you go through a specific agency? I looked on my local Facebook groups and was tempted to add some sort of advert, but then I worried whether they/I would be covered for insurance - that kind of thing.

Thanks!

You can directly Employ someone - anyone- as a cook/ childcare . (If they could register as self employed but most people aren't eligible )

To employ someone, You and organise your own employer liability insurance (Fish do it) for £104 a year , as well as payroll (£7/week) to do her NI and TAX calculations, then you register with Hmrc as employer to pay their tax and NI . If you look on direct payment charities websites like independent lives and enham they have egos of blank contracts and employer advice you can read through.

Lots of people employ staff like this (direct payments for care for eg, which is why I suggested you look on those sites)

Paying an agency you'll pay for those things through their higher hourly fees and time of the agency office staff. You don't choose who they send

Advertising for and employing your own cook/ childcare person and directly employing them will give you choice over who and their hours

Quite often carer directly employed PAs are paid up to £10.50 / hour, but you may find a good cook and childcare person costs you more (£15/hour?)

Agencies tend to charge £20-35/ hour

If you choose a agency they decide who to send. If you hire your own, you can dictate literally the rules and fire/hire accordingly as well.

Agencies expect a bit more to cover the costs etc. You are better off placing a advert on sites like childcare.co.uk or advertising directly on Facebook. I hired a childcare provider through a advert placed in a magazine. I did not use any company or agency as I wanted full control over who I hired and I wanted proof that they were competent.

We used a big nanny agency. There was a small registration fee, we wrote the job advert with their help, and then they contacted those in their database and started emailing through CVs of interested candidates. All candidates were already DBS checked and came with written references. We interviewed the ones we thought would suit our family, and offered the job to one candidate who accepted. There was then a quite substantial placement fee to the agency, calculated as a percentage of the nanny/housekeeper's annual salary.

One thing which limited our choice quite substantially was the fact that we needed someone who drove (because of school pick ups) but having gone with a big agency there were still quite a few candidates.

Thanks all! Really good info here. x