How did you find your nanny?

[Logan's Mom]

My son is 5 and up until a year ago a trusted family friend watched him.  Then we moved for my job and my husband has been at home with him.  Starting in Sept I will need someone to watch him and don't have a clue how to find someone.  To top it off, my son is on the Autistic Spectrum, high functioning, but has anxiety and sensory issues (loud noises).

How would you go about finding someone to care for your child?

[HollyBearsMom]

For our first nanny I used a nanny service.  It was expensive but they did all the grunt work-prescreening, background check, pulling driving records, checking prelim references. I could then do extensive 4-part interviews and do my own follow up reference checks. The fee also guaranteed emergency coverage, access to weekend/evening sitters if desired etc. They helped me develop a good contract, job description, house rules, etc too. For our first nanny who would be watching a non verbal infant it gave me peace of mind.

My recent nanny I found using sittercity.com. Inexpensive but the bulk of the grunt work is on you and you have to weed thru a LOT of undesirables. They claim to do background checks but I did all my own checks.

If you are not experienced in hiring an employee I highly recommend you do your homework. There are great books out there to help you develop good interview questions, walk your thru doing background checks, the best questions to ask a reference. Make sure you develop a job description that clearly outlines your expectations. Since your son has special needs you would want it to include things that are specific to his needs.

If you spend some time going thru old nanny posts here you will see what parents expect runs the gamut of "100% childcare and that's all" to "I expect our nanny to also cook, clean, do all the laundry, grocery shop, pick up the dry cleaning and run errands" There are nannies who do it all and others who just do childcare.  You can weed out a lot of candidates by being upfront with what you want, especially since it sounds like you are going to want someone with special needs experience. 

Good luck,  It's a lot of work but worth it when you find the right one!

[lunarlady]

We asked a friend's nanny is she knew anyone who wanted to be a nanny. So we interviewed her friends and hired one of them. Our friends poached their nanny from their son's preschool. That actually didn't work out too well for them, and they ended up letting her go after six months.

Biggest thing is to check background, references, and follow your instincts. Good luck!

[Peony]

I've used sittercity previously to find our last wonderful nanny, care.com is another one. She just moved on so I needed a new one. I had been browsing the sites and hadn't found one that really interested me. Recently on a whim I decided to check craiglist which I had always stayed away from previously, found an ad that looked interesting. Upon requesting a resume and references to even see if she was worthwhile to check out in greater detail, I discovered that she had nannied for a mom I've known professionally for years who of course gave a glowing review. To be brief, it was a great and probably rare find off of there. 

I have 3 soon to be 4 children, all have some mild SNs, two get multiple therapies a week so it isn't always easy to find someone who can keep up with our family. But they do exist. 

[JudiAU]

I've had good luck with sitter city.

[fiona2359]

I used craiglist and a referral from a neighbor. I've had decent luck w/ craigslist. I had to figure out how to effectively screen via email so that I wouldn't spend a lot of time talking with people that I wouldn't hire. I do a background check, call references, etc.