Employers Liability Insurance?

[notyummy]

I will be employing a mothers help next month. Do I need to have employers liability insurance? The HSE guidance I have read on it is quite vague and says you only need it if they work 'only for you'.

What do other people do.

I seem to remember I had some cover for my nanny under my Home insurance. I asked her to get her own insurance though, in case something happened to the children while in her care.

OK, will have a look at home insurance policy then.

Mothers help will only be working 2 hours 4 days a week. Not sure if it would be fair to ask he to get cover. Will have to look into costs.

A domestic employee will be covered under your Home contents insurance. For example, this summary of cover from Norwich Union says "Employer's liability gives you up to £10m protection if a domestic employee, such as a gardener or cleaner, has an accident or becomes ill while working for you and you are legally responsible to pay damages."
Check your policy, or contact your provider to confirm that you have the cover in place.

With regard to insurance a nanny can get insurance to cover themselves (such as in the event of a serious injury to a child in their care, which was not the fault of the insured), insurance cover typically costs from £70 per year (it has gone up by £10 this year), from insurers like Morton Michel (Note: Your mother's help would need to have either a childcare qualification or a lot of experience to qualify for insurance cover under the nanny policy in my view. It would be up to the underwriters of course to decide if they would provide the cover or not, so they could apply for insurance cover and see what the response is.)