What’s the difference between a nanny and an au pair? It’s a question we hear from a lot of parents looking for childcare.
Nannies and au pairs are both extremely different and it’s important that you understand the differences and exactly what you’re looking for from a childcare provider, before you make any decisions. Which is why we’ve put together this article to help you.
Continue reading “Au Pair or Nanny – What’s the difference?”
How active are your children? Did you know that only 10% of under-five year olds are meeting NHS guidelines for daily activity?
The NHS recommend that children are active for at least three hours per day to encourage physical and mental health and wellbeing, which is why we’ve put together our top suggestions to help get your children up and active each and every day, even in winter.
Continue reading “How to make activity a part of daily life”
Do you give your nanny a Christmas bonus?
A Christmas bonus is a great way to show your nanny how grateful you are for all that they’ve done over the past year.
Your nanny takes a lot off your plate by helping with homework, nap times, meal times, school runs and so much more. So, how do you show your appreciation?
Many families aren’t clear on why Christmas bonuses are important, or how to go about giving one. That’s why we’ve put together answers to the most common questions about giving a Christmas bonus.
Continue reading “Should you pay your nanny a Christmas bonus?”
There might be moments in your career when self-doubt starts to creep in and you find yourself wondering if you’re doing your job well enough. What you need to remember is that nobody is perfect and that every nanny, au-pair, childminder or babysitter will do things differently.
There is no one-method-suits-all when it comes to childcare, because no two children are the same and so we’ve put together a list of the most important skills and qualities that you need to be a good nanny.
Even if you’ve got experience with children, if you haven’t lived and worked with them full time, and you’re not a parent yourself, these may take you by surprise!
1. Bumps and bruises
It’s surprising how strong these little people are! Whether you’re playing a game, taking a trip to the park or changing a nappy, you’re susceptible to bashes, knocks, and bumps which means that you’re covered in bruises yourself (especially if you bruise easily). I’m always finding bruises and trying to remember where I got them – it could be from anything, the baby dropping a toy on your foot, or an accidental kick when pushing a child on the swings!
2. Sleep
We all know that not all children sleep through the night, especially when they’re young, but what surprised me was the amount of different things that can disturb the night. From bedwetting, to ‘I just can’t sleep’, night time feeds, illness and nightmares… And then they will be up early in the morning too!
3. All things slime
Who knew how much snot and dribble could come out of those little humans! If they’re a bit older, they’ll deal with a lot of this themselves, but for young children and babies, it’s a constant battle to wipe noses, change nappies, and clear up dribble!
4. Laundry
You might have heard about how much laundry a baby makes, but did you ever think that some of that would be yours? A jumper you may have once been able to wear a few times before a wash, now might not last a full day!
5. Creatures
If your charges are at school or nursery, it is likely that they will come into contact with all kinds of germs and parasites. Think headlice, worms and chicken pox. Sadly these things aren’t contained just to the child and will most likely be spread to you, which means nitcombing and medicine for you too! Yuk!
6. Getting attached
Even after all of that, you will grow to love the little monsters. They’ll make you smile, give you cuddles and do some very cute and funny things so if you take a holiday away, expect to miss them!
Thanos for sharing, Cate! If you have something you’d like to share just drop us a line on frances@nannyjob.co.uk
What is an au pair?
An au pair is a young person, usually aged 17-25, who comes to the UK with the aim of improving their English and/or experiencing life in another country. They can come from any country in the European union or certain other countries which are eligible for a Tier 5 Youth Mobility Scheme Visa, including Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand. They live with a family (there is no such thing as a live out au pair) and are provided with a bedroom, all meals and some pocket money in return for some light childcare and helping with household chores. They should be included in family activities such as days or meals out too.
What do they do?
Au pairs usually look after children aged 3+ outside school or nursery times, although they may work alongside a parent caring for younger children or do short periods of wraparound care. They can prepare simple meals, play with children, supervise homework (although they may not be able to help), take children to and from activities and do chores such as sweeping the floor, washing up or tidying up toys.
What can’t they do?
Au pairs are not suitable for full time care, especially of young children. A reliable au pair may be able to provide a few weeks of full time care in school holidays for additional pay or time off. They also don’t do heavy cleaning such as cleaning windows or bathrooms (except their own) or family laundry.
How much are they paid?
An au pair is usually paid £70-100 per week. If they are paid above the lower earnings limit you will need to register as an employer. You may also need to register as an employer if they get another job, for example a Saturday job. You will also be expected to provide some form of transport so they can get to English classes etc unless everything is within walking distance. In London this is usually an Oyster card, outside London it is more common for an au pair to be provided with a local bus pass or bicycle or be insured on a car.
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What is a nanny?
A nanny is a qualified or experienced childcarer who is able to take sole charge of children on a full or part time basis. They may be of any nationality as long as they have the right to work in the UK and any age from 18 to 70+. They can live in or live out and are paid a salary, from which tax and national insurance must be deducted by their employer.
What do they do?
A nanny will take care of everything to do with the children, from feeding and changing to providing educational activities, making food and bottles to children’s laundry and cleaning their bedrooms. Some nannies are also willing to batch cook meals to freeze for the children or the family or take on PA duties such as waiting in for parcels or repairmen and picking up dry cleaning. They will supervise and help with homework and music practice and may work overnight or at weekends in a proxy parent role.
What can’t they do?
There is virtually nothing a nanny can’t do, but there are limits to what most will be happy to do. Nannies are not housekeepers, they do not usually tidy up after parents or manage the house. They also can’t fly using an umbrella.
How much are they paid?
The 2013 nannytax salary survey showed that nanny ranges varied from £318 to £672 gross for a 50 hour week. Live in wages are typically lower than live out.
Maternity nurses, or maternity nannies, are newborn specialists who work with parents for the first few weeks of a new baby’s life to help the adjust to parenthood and implement a good routine. They usually work 24 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week, and an experienced maternity nurse can earn in excess of £1000 per week. They are self-employed and get work from agencies, advertising themselves on sites such as nannyjob.co.uk and via word of mouth. Jobs are can last between 4 weeks and 6 months so maternity nurses are always keeping an eye out for work, attending interviews and planning ahead. Maternity nurses also need to keep an eye on their accounts, keep track of expenses and submit their own tax returns.
Many families request specialist qualifications such as MNT’s Maternity Practitioner, NEST Postnatal Carer or BabyEm’s Maternity Nurse Training courses. Other courses which cover breastfeeding, postnatal depression or multiples to name just a few can also be valuable additions to your CV. Most course providers recommend that you have substantial experience with newborns before studying to become a maternity nurse so you can match the theory you learn in the classroom with your practical experiences. This experience will also give you valuable references when you are trying to get your first maternity nurse booking. Trainee maternity nurses often charge much less than their experienced colleagues in order to gain experience, work with families expecting their second or third child or take on part-time day or night work.
A maternity nurse needs to be cheerful, flexible, organised and able to cope on very little sleep. It’s not just about working with newborn babies, the goal is to involve the parents from the start and leave them feeling confident and able to look after their baby on their own when you leave, but it can be a rewarding progression from nannying into an exciting new career. If you are interested in finding out more, why not ask your questions on our community area?
It happens to everyone at some point. Sick child, sick childminder or nanny, unexpected business trip, one child in hospital and siblings not allowed in or your carefully prepared backup plan for nursery closure has fallen through. You need emergency childcare. Apart from the logistics of sourcing a temporary nanny, emergency childminder or last minute nursery place there are a few things to consider. You want to make the handover as smooth and stressfree as possible for you, your temporary childcare and above all your child.
It happens to everyone at some point. Sick child, sick childminder or nanny, unexpected business trip, one child in hospital and siblings not allowed in or your carefully prepared backup plan for nursery closure has fallen through. You need emergency childcare. Apart from the logistics of sourcing a temporary nanny, emergency childminder or last minute nursery place there are a few things to consider. You want to make the handover as smooth and stress-free as possible for you, your temporary childcare and above all your child
There are many ways to find emergency childcare, via an agency or searching for temporary nannies with availability. It’s best to maximise your chances by following as many leads as possible. Once you’ve found someone don’t be tempted to skip steps – ask for at least 2 references and either request scans of their checks and qualifications or get them to bring them along so you can see for yourself before they start work.
Prepare your child as much as possible for the change to his routine by talking about the new childcare and highlighting the advantages and similarities. Reassure them that this isn’t a permanent change to their routine and they will be able to return to normal afterwards. A special comforter, blanket or cuddly toy, even if usually reserved for bedtimes, may help your child deal with the transition.
Leave a much detail as possible for your new nanny or childminder concerning your child’s routine and favourite foods and activities and, if you have chosen an emergency nanny, your house.An experienced temporary nanny will be used to parachuting in and getting on with it but it’s better to have too much detail than none at all. After all if everything is going well they may not need to refer to your speedily put together manual but should they need to know something it will make their life, and yours, a lot easier if they can just scan through to find what they need to know.
Where possible ensure sufficient time for a handover but don’t drag it out for too long. It’s hard leaving your child with someone she and you don’t know but it can be very confusing if you’ve explained that the emergency nanny or childminder is going to look after her and then you don’t leave. Tell the emergency childcarer to call you if there are any problems or your child doesn’t settle, and leave as many numbers as possible for you and your partner so you can be reached easily.
Discuss payment beforehand. There’s nothing worse than turning up at the end of the day with an empty purse to find that they are expecting cash. There’s nothing illegal about paying in cash, in fact many childcarers who take short-notice, short-term jobs prefer it as it means they know they’ve been paid. Be aware that paying in cash doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have to deduct tax and National Insurance or a temporary nanny; some are self-employed but if they’re there for more than a few days they may be expecting you to act as their employer. If you already employ a nanny and use a payroll agency then they should be able to help you.
Prepare for emergencies by leaving a letter of consent for medical treatment. It would be exceptionally bad luck to face a trip to A&E on top of your childcare crisis but these things can happen and it’s safer to be prepared.
Finally, give yourself permission to make the day as easy as possible. The housework can wait, dinner can be the freezer’s finest or a takeaway, take a taxi – surviving emergency childcare is tough enough without extra work.
Hopefully you and your child will come through smiling, and even asking for your temporary nanny to come back!
Stuck for ideas? Why not try a themed activity week?! Nanny Claire has done weeks of activities centered around Princesses, cars and space, and here she shares her Winter Olympic theme with a twist.
I’m a nanny and look after 3 children, two girls E 12 years old and AM 6 years old and one boy AC 9 years old. My job is usually part-time, I do the school run and then ferrying around various after school activities and playdates. However, there are times that those who look after children dread…the school holidays.
I had not given much thought as to what we were going to do all week, swimming, movies and playdates were confirmed but they don’t take up the whole week. On Monday the kids were having breakfast and it just so happened that the Winter Olympics were on, so especially with sports obsessed AC, we were watching the curling. I’m usually quite strict on TV hours, switched off after breakfast until at least 4:30pm, but the Winter Olympics is not on every week so it’s an exception to the rule.
As most of us who look after children know, it’s not long before we get the inevitable phrase “What are we going to do today?”, one of the kids said that curling looking fun so I said I bet we can find something to do curling with if you get washed and dressed, at which point they vanished like speedy ninjas.
So now I had to find something to play curling with, I wandered around looking at the various toys and then I saw the puffles…If anyone doesn’t know what a puffle is, they are pets for penguins on the popular Club Penguin game, they are basically small round, come in various colours and have fuzzy hair. There happen to be quite a few in the kids collection, kind of curling stone shaped and should slide across the floor quite nicely!
The weather outside was typically pouring down with rain, so I tested some chalk on the kitchen tiles just to make sure it would come off later (not my floor after all!), no problem there so I sketched out some circles to represent the house in curling, got the brush out of the cupboard and we were ready to go! There was soon puffles flying in all directions and much laughing, arguing and cheering. We decided that scoring would be whoever got their puffles closest to the middle on their turn, I didn’t expect the game to be such a big hit and the kids asked what other events we could do.
So we looked up the other Olympic sports there were, and I tried to work out how we could replicate them at home, a brief thought of kids sliding down the stairs on trays entered my mind swiftly followed by thoughts of a trip to A & E. However bob sleigh could work, if we made them for the puffles and not the kids. So at dinner I told the kids we were going to be making bob sleds for the puffles tomorrow.
On Tuesday morning I was greeted with much excitement, “Are we still making sleds for puffles today? After breakfast I raided my box collection, always have a variety of empty boxes for such rainy days, I cut down 3 boxes to the same size for each of them, out came the glue, and various arts and crafts paraphernalia. There was much discussion about what would make it slide better, runners on the bottom, aerodynamics, making it look pretty, etc.
I fashioned a slide out of some cardboard box strips and white bin liners, and put it on the stairs, we then timed each puffle and recorded the time. The kids spontaneously decided to create a team name and made-up country for their puffles, so we then had team Fermat for E, team Mouseling for AM and team I Don’t Know for AC, they created maps for their countries and an event chart went up on the wall, all their own ideas I’m proud to say.
The pressure was now on me to come up with the next day’s event, thinking of the events involved I decided that the Ski slalom was possible with a little help from a remote control car! This did involve tying the puffle to the car under the pretence of a seat belt, and the kids made crash helmets out of craft foam for them! The kids have a building set called Cranium which is a set of poles and cloths which can be constructed to create play houses, etc. and the poles turned out to be quite useful for slalom flags. We opted for the rule of having to go around 2 poles at least and not all of them, this way they all had a good chance to get around the course successfully. They had plenty of time to practice driving the car before we did individual times and recorded them on the event sheet, needless to say puffles and poles went flying in all directions!
I went home that night and dreamt of puffles, and how to do the next event! I decided that I could recycle the bob sled run into a ski jump and use the remote control car again; we used a sun lounger cushion so we didn’t mangle the car. I admit the car was very slow but managed to construct the jump so if you lined up well you could get the car to do a small jump off the end, sufficient enough to get a small measurement anyway. The kids all got to practice again before we took some final measurements. This wrapped up the final event of the Pufflympics, the next day was Friday and the last day of the holidays.
We decided to host our own closing ceremony; a toy shopping trolley became a puffle parade float with a few adaptions of course. The kids designed their own part of the float to put their puffle on to reflect their team and country. Next was designing their own podium step, E helped me make some medals by gluing some sequins to stickers and then cutting them out. E made a party playlist on her iPod and wrote a speech, AC lined the parade route on the floor with string and AM helped me get some food ready. It was junk food heaven as I let them have full reign on what food they wanted, so we had hot dogs, pizza, chips, cheese sandwiches and squishy tomatoes (AM really really likes cherry tomatoes roasted until extremely squishy)!
So after a busy week hosting the Pufflympics the kids had been entertained all week when it was generally too rainy to go outside, and I hadn’t been driven mad by kids asking what they can do every 10 minutes. Most importantly we all learned a lot more about the winter Olympic sports, lots of fancy new words and rules and at a fraction of a cost compared to the real thing. I essentially used toys and things we had in the house, the kids had a blast and spontaneously added lots of their own ideas of what they could do. If you fancy hosting your own event you don’t necessarily have to have puffles on hand, cars would also have made great competitors for the Carlympics or a variety of cuddly toys for the Cuddlympics? You don’t need to be confined indoors or to the Olympics either. Why not host the World Cup or the Commonwealth Games outside?
One of the most common requirements for childcarers is a valid paediatric first aid certificate. All registered child minders have to hold this, as well as OFSTED registered nannies. Nurseries only have to have one member of staff trained but it’s good practice for most, if not all, staff to have done a course.
Accidents can happen at any time and frighteningly quickly. One of the biggest risks for small children is choking. The leading First Aid organizations in the UK have just published new guidance for managing choking in a baby. Instead of lying the baby along your arm and giving back slaps to dislodge the blockage they now recommend putting the child face down across your lap to administer back slaps. Changes like this are part of the reason a First Aid certificate should always be within date and fully renewed every 3 years.
It’s important to make sure the certificate specifically covers paediatric first aid as some treatment is different for children that won’t have been covered on an adult course.
Thorough First Aid training means a childcarer should feel confident about handling an incident and this will help them stay calm and remember what to do. A course should also involve hands on practice to ensure the techniques are correctly understood. No amount of reading can replace this practical component.
We urge parents to ensure their nannies and babysitters are trained in First Aid and support this petition to make it a legal requirement for all nursery worker to hold a First Aid certificate too. Please take a moment to read and sign.
First Aid courses are available through organisations such as the Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance, private providers and many nanny agencies.
