Nanny with kid - fair pay

[MPP]

Hi. I am looking for advice please. I am
trying to find out how much I shld look into paying a nanny to look after my 3 year old and her 2 year together in my home.
I live in Sw London.
Any thoughts. / advice would be very much apprecciated.
M

London rates are higher. You could call a Nanny agency in your area and just ask them wnat a ball park figure is.

I have nannied for 16 years, and all of them with my children coming too apart from the last year when they now look after themselves! I have never been paid less as I have more experience and my children have been a bonus for the child I was caring for..great little playmate!

rough cost here in Kent is around £90/day for a 12 hour day take home for highly experienced nanny..lots at 5/days week for 10 hour days at £350 take home...

where in kent are you mrspoppins

im in kent, and yes i am a very experienced nanny as are some of my friends and we earn £450/500+ for 5 days so £100+ a day and thats for 10hrs - if i work 12 i get £120

yes there are some jobs advertised for £350 but they wouldnt get highly experienced nannies for that

MPP it varies from job to job, some employers happy to pay the same, some pay £10/20% less, so if the averge wage was £10nett then you would pay £8

Given that they have no own childcare costs (which would eat a huge chink of their salary, i'd say 30-40% reduction of what you would normally pay.

Effectively you haven't got a one to one nanny but a nanny share so the salary should be based on that.

Dont forget to take into account who pays for the childs food, activities etc plus if the nanny wants to take her own child to an activity yours will have to tag along.

I think that is steep!!! I always contributed to the food and it worked out brilliantly. At one point for over 8 years I had my own two and their three! We were a really happy lot!

If you want solely a one to one nanny, then don't look for one with a child of her own.

If you can see that there will be benefits to your child from her child or she is just simply the best nanny you interviewed and you want her, then you musn't penalise the Nanny for that by paying her a considerably less wage...after all.. the amount of work at the end of every day that she will have done will be equal!

If it isn't..and it isn't working out then that is the time to talk it over but hopefully all those possible issues will be ironed out before the signing of contracts.

The going rate around here for a nanny with her own child is half the nanny share rate (ie half £12/13) so £6.00/6.50 net. If the nanny is looking after her child too, even with the benefit of he child to play with your child is still not going to get as much attention and you have the added problem of what to do if her child gets sick. One of my friends just added a clause in her contract that the nanny must make alternative arrangements if her child is sick.

I hope that clause is flexible and not set in stone! So that if a child is very ill Mum can stay at home with him/her. Did you mean the contract asked that she try to make alternative arrangements?

I have been a nanny with my own child (18 years ago now ) and luckily my dd was very healthy so I never needed to take time off, but if she had have been I did have some alternatives in place (her Dad and her Godmother) but if my dd had been ill enough that only Mummy would do then I would have had to take the time off. I can't imagine that if you worked in an office your contract would have a clause saying you have to come in when your children are unwell.

Mrspoppins you must be lucky as regardless of experience of nanny in question
if they bring own
child, you are not paying for same service as a nanny without their own child.

Op- if you search there are quite a few threads on this issue plus contract terms, interview questions etc

It's a question of weighing each candidate up against each other and your expectations. One of my families who I still see weekly specified to the agency no children of Nanny's own but agency pushed for them to see me...I got the job and still do work for them.

You may have a Nanny without children who may be streets ahead of the others...great..employ her quickly before someone else does but it can also work the other way round!

If a nanny does the job you pay her to then children of her own should not come into it...What child in a normal household is brought up by 24/7 one to one care with no household chores/ sharing time with other human beings?...none that I feel have turned out to be rounded individuals!

I take your point that you pay more according to experience and therefore you shouldn't lose out if you have a child. And yes no child in world gets Total
attention without carer doing other things (housework, paying attention to sibling, going on mumsnet ). however despite all this I think the issue and een with benefits of mixing with nannys child, it's not the employer parents own child and therefore you are in position of nanny share and that carries a discount.

I am returning back to work later on in the year with my dd and going back to my old family. I'll be on the same salary as when i left but if i were to work for a different family i would expect a drop of maybe 20% or so. I think each job is different and depends on how much experience the nanny has.

"If a nanny does the job you pay her to then children of her own should not come into it...What child in a normal household is brought up by 24/7 one to one care with no household chores/ sharing time with other human beings?"

Plenty of people have just the one child and employ a nanny because they want one to one care and plenty of only children are raised by SAHM's - are you saying that all only children are not rounded individuals?. A sibling and a nannys child are completely different so even those with more than one child would still see a nanny bringing her own child as a nanny share.

A nanny wont be providing the same service though if she brings her own child, it means an extra to feed, change, play with and when they get older perhaps another school run and the mindee getting taken to extra activities/school events of another child.

Factoring in they have no childcare costs (which they would probably have in any other job) I think a good deduction is certainly needed. Nanny saves on childcare still and the employer gets a reduction for having shared care.

Oh for goodness sake..no!That's not what I was saying!!
I would defy you to find a SAHM who spends every waking hour with their child and does nothing else at all...That just isn't real life...They will invite kids over to play/ share/ bicker!!! That is how children learn too!

A child who has their every whim, desire, want immediately gratified and never has to learn compromise or patience will struggle once at school...that would be a jolt..unless they are to be home schooled that is!!!

Additional children can be great if the Nanny is good at her job. Apart from the job I had for 8 years where mine were 0,5 and theirs were 5,7,9, my two became older and older as the charges in subsequent jobs stayed little...They were a huge source of help and play and they learned a lot too. The families I care for become an extension of my own and I an extension of theirs.

Children with siblings can benifit from the right Nanny with her own child/ren just as those without.
It taked the right Nanny and the right family for it to work.

Please ignore spelling
Preparing lunch, supervising homework and typing at the same time...!!!

The arrangement is going to be very similar to a nannyshare and you will be making some compromises if the nanny brings her own child. Your child will get a bit less attention, just as they would if you were juggling two siblings, and just as they would in a nannyshare arrangement. It doesn't mean the nanny won't take care of them, keep them just as safe etc as that will be her priority, but it does mean that she will have a bit less time to focus on their development as an individual. Going rate in my area of SW London is £9 net an hour for a nanny who is reasonably well experienced. For a nannyshare they would probably be paid £1-£2 more on top of their usual rates and that would then be typically split 50/50 between two families. Therefore, I think a reduction of 35-40% off the going rate for a nanny with her level of experience is reasonable if she brings her own child to work and it is probably realistic and reasonable to offer to pay for her child to attend any activities that you want your child to attend. As far as sickness is concerned, I think you are better off treating her child like a sibling and accepting that your and her child will pass illnesses to one another. Hence I would let the nanny bring her child to work when sick unless her child is so ill as to be bedridden - otherwise if she has to organise alternative childcare she will probably find it difficult at short notice and hence have to let you down or be very late for work. The nanny will be saving on childcare costs and getting to spend all day with her child so ought to be happy with your offer but if not I would look elsewhere as we are in a recession and there should be plenty of others to choose from.

oh some of the comments here made me laugh

can't remember who said it
because a nanny has no childcare costs she should take a cut in pay???

what if you as a mum get free childcare from a grandparent - does that mean that you have to have a pay cut at work as well, after all you have no childcare costs???
that is just silly

I was a nanny for 16 years and now I am a mum and can see both sides of the story. I think a nanny with own chld v one without the child is pointless to discuss
is the nanny capable af doing the job???
that would be the only thing concerning me, is she competent enough, not if she has a child or not.

Now I am expecting my second so I am not working, but while I went to work with my first baby I still got the normal pay, I was still doing the exact same job so why not get the exact same pay?!

But you weren't doing the exact same job nanny2mummy, what if you were feeding your baby and one of your charges wanted something - they would have to wait; if you weren't feeding your baby they wouldn't. Like having multiple children under any circumstances dividing your time between two or more and having 1:1 is totally different. I'm not saying you're not totally competent and capable of looking after many kids happily at the same time, but I don't see how you can argue you are doing the same job. You are now a nanny share by definition.

well my charge never got what he wanted instantly
If I was doing something he would have to wait a minute or two
so same here, if I was feeding a baby he would have to wait a bit

I was not there to indulge his every whim!!!
I was still doing the same job, feeding him, entairtaining him, making sure he is safe and taking him on outings/activities
Seriously I don't get this 1:1 thing, just because there is only one child to look after does that mean you have to jump the same second they demand something
They have to learn that things do not get done instantly

"what if you as a mum get free childcare from a grandparent - does that mean that you have to have a pay cut at work as well, after all you have no childcare costs???"

Thats just a silly comparison, for a start the child is not being taken to work with the parent and impacting on the job.

I don't think it is silly
my job is to take care of children, 1 or 5 of them makes no difference to me
so it is hardly the same, another child does not impact my work in any way!

But it does impact for the parents who may have specifically chosen their child to be an only child so they get 100% adult focus and attention - whether that's right or wrong - or a parent who doesn't want their child's activities to be impacted by having another baby around, going swimming for example. There are things that having 2 children to one carer makes it impossible to do and it's not necessarily the parent's choice. I agree, it's a nannyshare.

"But it does impact for the parents who may have specifically chosen their child to be an only child so they get 100% adult focus and attention - whether that's right or wrong"

Yes that is true
that is why I worked for parents who were not like that.
And you can still take 2 kids swimming, I looked after twins for 3 years and we did everything other singleton children did, but we had more fun :-)

My best friend had a nanny and when she had a baby she asked to bring him to work (however you dress this up that is what it is!) As there was a large age difference (6 years) between her baby and her charges everything went down hill. Her charges werent allowed to make any noise whilst her baby was sleeping. She started leaving travel cots and other baby stuff over the weekend. She couldnt take her charges to the cinema or other such trips. Eventually the mother called her a halt to this but the nanny wasnt happy... Couldnt see what the problem was.

You can take 2 children swimming but it does impact on what you can do. An older child might want to go into the 'big' pool, start trying to swim underwater, have nanny catch them when they jump in from the side - these are things you really can't do when you have a younger baby around. It's tough for parents who have gone past the baby stage and want their children to do age-appropriate things which might be impacted by a baby. It doesn't mean you can't do them, it just changes things, and there is absolutely no way around that. You can't make statements like 'another child does not impact my work in any way' because it does. At least some of the time things would be different if the number of children were different!

Also a nanny with an existing own child is in a position to choose not to work with parents who want 100% one to one attention but a nanny who is already working for parents like that and has her own baby doesn't get to make that choice. Even acknowledging that parents like that exist is tacitly admitting that having another child around makes a difference.

but as a nanny you are used to jugling all ages
I had a family with really big age gap with kids
their oldest was 12 and youngest was 3 months when I started
I just did the job

Now I think you got me wrong in regards to taking my own child to work
I would only do that in jobs where it was good for the child
I would NEVER even think of taking a baby to work with me if I was looking after school age kids, or kids that were much older than my baby

I was simply refering to the fact that it can be nice and beneficial to all parties to have playmates, being an only child is not much fun IMO
If there was a child of roughly same age already in the family, I seriously don't see where the problem is. But I would never bring a baby to work just for the sake of bringing my child with me because I have no where else to leave them
That is a completely different issue

It might be nice and beneficial but it's still a nanny share and sometimes an involuntary one. It is NOT the exact same job as people keep claiming.

I personally (if I was employing a nanny instead of being one) would welcome a nanny with own child because it's likely to be a stable arrangement, the nanny probably has a fair amount of experience and it would be a playmate for my own DCs BUT I would be expecting to pay less, because it's a nanny share, and I would want the nanny to have thought everything through carefully.