Baby Sitters
Having a baby sitter may be the best choice for childcare for you depending on your lifestyle, work schedule and the level of support you need in your life. A baby sitter can be anyone from the high school student next store who watches the children on “date night” to a more full time child care provider. Finding the right person, regardless of your specific needs, time commitments and skill sets you need for a baby sitter, can be difficult, especially when you are trusting the care of your child with this person.
HOW CAN I FIND THE BEST BABY SITTER FOR MY NEEDS?
Their are many ways to find babysitters that will fill your needs and who will be a great caregiver for your child. You can start by asking your local network of friends and family for trusted leads, but you will likely need to cast a broader net to have options as far as who you hire and having backup choices in case the first one doesn’t work out. You may try the local classifieds or online classifieds, interview candidates, conduct your own background checks etc. if you have the time. If you decide to resource this person yourself, please make sure you do thorough checks on their driving records, criminal records and their legal work status. You will sleep better at night knowing that your child is in good safe hands during the day.
Another good way of finding a baby sitter for your child is to go through a service that provides background checks, provides resumes for you to review and allows you to screen information online before you begin the interviewing process. We recommend this route for several reasons. 1) It will save you time and yield many good, qualified candidates, 2) These services are inexpensive considering the value you receive (checks, resumes, upfront info, reviews) and 3) national, online services have much larger databases of people and will not try to send you someone who may not be good fit (like small local agencies might).
WHERE CAN I START?
We recommend you take a look around both of the following services:
SitterCity.com (They are currently offering a promo code at Sittercity so you can get 10% off instantly when you register!)
You can test the services by their free search to get an idea of the amount of potential candidates you will have near you, and to see if the amount of service they provide is right for you. If you’d like to read our reviews of these two services, please see the following page for details:
