Childcare Ideas for Freelance Parents

We know how hard it is as a freelancer or shift worker when it comes to childcare arrangements — especially with younger children.

Structure is just as important to your business or career success aas for your child’s well-being. You might need to juggle a few things and work at it for a while until you find a solution.

Having different types of child can upset a kids routine, but can also cause you extra headache, and can end up costing a small fortune. For many years we have worked with freelance parents and parents who do not work the conventional 9–5 hours. We have put together some ideas to help you figure out childcare solutions:

1. You could offer a nanny a ‘base level’ of hours so these can be guaranteed each week and then discuss how to build flexibility in that arrangement. This way a nanny can be certain of the minimum amount she can earn weekly and will most likely stay with you for longer.
2. Perhaps use a combination of childcare: nursery, childminder and a nanny to have all days of the week covered. It requires a lot of forward planning but it might be the only solution to have this ‘combination childcare’ to cover all times and days you might need to be at work.
3. Another solution could be to have a ‘pool’ of ad-hoc/freelance nannies who you can call on which is large enough to serve you even at the last minute. You may need to interview, meet and trial several nannies to get this arrangement working properly. Many parents use our site in this way to source a group of nannies to be able to call on.
4. You could try to arrange a nanny share — you and another family share a nanny to guarantee a set number of hours each week and perhaps this could balance out as a near full time week for the nanny.
5. Finally, you may be very lucky and find a nanny who perhaps can pick up work from you when you need her and not need to work when you don’t. Perhaps the nanny works part time as a nanny and part time in another job which is also freelance. Many of our team members work in this way, and are not necessarily career nannies needing full time hours each week.

We recommend writing a very detailed job description on our site to attract the right person. You would need to describe what your typical working hours and pattern is like to find a person that fits. Do not be afraid to write lots of nice positive things to find the right person — something you write will resonate with the right person and they could end up being your ideal nanny!

We recommend writing your job description and starting the process of hire a couple of months before you begin work yourself to make sure you have plenty of time to find the right person. Post your job requirements now on our site and find your ideal nanny today.

It is important for nanny and parent alike that they are absolutely certain on the employment status between them. If you hire a permanent nanny make sure you set yourself up with HMRC correctly. Our partner, Nanny Tax can help you with getting this done so you have one less thing to worry about.

Originally published at nanny.network on April 12, 2018.