Parent Time

If you think hiring a nanny through an agency is no more complicated than picking up the phone and placing an order for Mary Poppins, Martin Walker* has news for you: She isn't that easy to find. Not only do you have to search out a reputable agency - no small task, according to this St. Catharines, Ontario, father of three - then you have to find the right nanny. And if you're lucky enough to find the caregiver of your dreams, there are still references to check, fees to pay and government red tape to wade through before she's happily in your home caring for your kids. "In the end," says Walker, "I managed to recruit a terrific nanny through a top-tier agency, but that was only after checking out a lot of other nanny agencies. You really have to be careful about who you're dealing with."

Laura Kelly*, a southwestern Ontario mother, agrees that you can't be too careful. She says the industry needs to pull up its socks for parents to feel confident in the quality of the nannies. Her family was forced to fire the part-time nanny they'd hired through a local agency just four weeks into the placement because the caregiver in question was so inept when it came to dealing with infants that Kelly felt her son's health and well-being were in jeopardy.

Rather than asking the agency to find her another caregiver, however, Kelly decided to forfeit the $180 placement fee and take matters into her own hands. "I had lost all trust in the agency at this point," she recalls. "I had assumed the candidates had been carefully pre-screened and that the agency would only send qualified people, but that's certainly not what happened in our case."

Like Kelly, Jennifer Fong had a disappointing experience with Toronto-area agencies. "If there was one issue that put a black cloud over my maternity leave, it was finding child care," she recalls. "One of the agencies simply flooded our fax machine with applications, none of which appeared to have been vetted at all." While one of the three agencies ultimately succeeded in finding a nanny for the family, the solution was only temporary: The woman changed her mind about the job two weeks before Fong was scheduled to return to work. Rather than going the agency route again, Fong decided to handle the recruiting herself and, in the end, managed to find a highly skilled nanny who stayed with the family until their recent move to Calgary.

Of course, not everyone who does business with an agency has a nightmarish experience. Walker, for example, is very pleased with the nanny he hired through St. Catharines-based Select Nannies Inc. The secret is to know upfront what to expect and the questions to ask. Here are a few tips:

Cost
According to Eva Knof, owner of the agency Walker ultimately chose, you can expect to pay approximately $235 a week for a live-in nanny in smaller communities and $290 a week in larger centres such as Toronto.

Do some quick number crunching and you'll discover this falls below minimum wage in most parts of the country. In Ontario, for example, where minimum wage is $6.85 an hour, employers are entitled to take up to $85.25 off the weekly wages of a live-in nanny to cover her room and board. Minimum wage rates and employment standards legislation vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so make sure you have a firm grasp of the rules in your province or territory before you commit to hiring a nanny.

A live-out nanny costs more - about $400 a week in Toronto and $275 in smaller communities - because you can't deduct room and board, but it's still less than what you'd pay for two full-time child-care spaces in a licensed daycare. These typically run between $200 and $250 a week per child. This is one of the reasons why nanny care has particular appeal to families with two or more children. Yet, it's a hefty fee to pay if you're looking for care for your one-and-only.

Agencies often charge a placement fee roughly the equivalent of one month of the nanny's salary (about $1,200, depending on where you live). And, what's more, you might also have to pick up the tab for the nanny's airfare if she's relocating to take the job. For its part, the agency should do some pre-screening - sorting through the résumés and getting rid of all the underqualified candidates so you don't have to do all that weeding yourself - run a criminal reference check on the nanny and provide some sort of placement guarantee. However, the onus is on you to ensure the agency actually follows through and delivers what it promises. This means getting an agreement upfront and ensuring the agency lives up to the letter of that agreement.

Something else to file under buyer beware: Be careful of agencies that collect fees from both families and caregivers. Some have been known to double-dip in this way, skimming money off the nanny's salary. Agencies should collect fees from families, not from the nanny herself.

Regulations
Nanny agencies are covered by the relatively lax laws governing employment agencies rather than the more rigorous standards that apply to licensed child-care operations, according to Martha Friendly of the Childcare Research Unit at the University of Toronto. In the absence of any regulatory body overseeing nanny agencies, parents can find themselves left swinging in the wind if a problem arises.

You wouldn't expect an agency owner to agree with Friendly's take on the situation, but Knof stands behind Friendly's comments 100 percent. "You can run a nanny agency with little more than an answering machine these days," she says.

Or a Web page for that matter. One of the hottest trends in the nanny recruitment business is to charge nannies and parents hefty fees for accessing online databases, whether or not a placement actually occurs. Instead of getting the face-to-face contact and hand holding that occurs when you're dealing with a reputable agency, you can be left paying a sizable fee for what essentially amounts to a do-it-yourself service. (Some sites leave all of the pre-screening up to you, although others are willing to provide this service for an additional fee.)

Questions to Ask

1. What services are included?
   No two nanny agencies have identical policies when it comes to screening applicants and conducting police and reference checks. According to Eve Lipsyc, a Toronto-based consultant specializing in child care, you should look for an agency willing to walk you through all the red tape associated with becoming an employer for the first time: registering as a business; obtaining a payroll remittance number from Canada Customs and Revenue Agency; arranging for your nanny's health plan; and meeting all immigration requirements if you're hiring someone from another country.
   
2. What about backup?
   Let's say your nanny has to leave town in a hurry for a family funeral. Does the agency provide backup? Unfortunately, most don't, so don't be surprised if you have to come up with your own backup.
   
3. How will you help the nanny settle in?
   Look for an agency genuinely interested in ensuring that both you and your caregiver are a good fit for one another. A good agency should also be willing to help her connect with other nannies in the community.
   
4. Is there a placement guarantee?
   Nicky Holmes of Toronto used an agency to find a child-care provider for her two children, ages two and one. She ultimately chose the one that appeared most committed to customer service. "The agency agreed to provide a six-month placement guarantee rather than its standard three-month guarantee. If the arrangement didn't work out for whatever reason, a new caregiver would be provided without us having to pay a second placement fee." Fortunately, Holmes never had to take the agency up on that offer: The nanny was an instant hit with the entire family. "I can't say enough wonderful things about Juliet," she says. "She's been just amazing with the kids."
   
5. What about references?
   While the lack of industry standards means there's always an element of risk, according to Sandra Griffin, executive director of the Canadian Child Care Federation, you can increase your chances of winning at agency roulette by asking friends and relatives for recommendations. If you don't know anyone who's actually used an agency, you'll have to settle for the next best thing: checking the references the agency provides. And do ask for references. "You are putting the care of your child in someone else's hands. You have every right to ask questions," says Lipsyc.
   
6. Can I see your business licence?
   Before you sign on the dotted line, make sure the agency in question is operating legally. The challenge is in finding out exactly what laws apply to nanny agencies in your province or territory. According to Suzanne Potvin, team leader of the Foreign Worker Program at Human Resources Development Canada, there's "an absolute mishmash of legislation and standards" governing nanny agencies. Your best bet? Get in touch with your provincial or territorial ministry of labour and find out the rules of the game before you decide whether you want to play ball with a particular agency.

* Names changed by request.

In An Emergency

If there's a Murphy's Law that applies to working parents, it goes something like this: "The odds of you making it into work on a given day are inversely proportional to the importance of your being there." In other words, your child will only break out in chickenpox on the day the Big Boss is flying halfway around the world for a special meeting with you.

It's a rare working parent who hasn't encountered this scenario, frantically hitting the speed-dial buttons at 7 a.m. in the hope of finding someone - anyone - who can pinch-hit on the child-care front. While some parents are lucky enough to have access to emergency services such as those offered through the Short Term Child Care Program (Andrew Fleck Child Care Services) in Ottawa, these programs are the exception rather than the rule.

Funded by a consortium of seven Ottawa-area employers, the program offers emergency child care to workers whose regular arrangements fall through. According to program manager Lyne Tremblay, parents using the service might be offered a temporary space in a daycare centre, a licensed home child care, or the services of an in-home child-care provider. The amount an employee is required to pay varies from company to company depending on how much of the tab the employer has agreed to pick up. An employee whose company has paid the annual access fee but not the hourly rate for in-home care can expect to pay approximately $9.50 for each hour of service.

As hefty as that may sound, it's a bargain compared to the fees charged for personal-support workers provided by home health-care agencies - another source of emergency child care in some communities. The going rate for such services can easily top $20 an hour.

And even if you can afford to pay for such services, there's no guarantee you'll find them available in your community. According to Sandra Griffin of the Canadian Child Care Federation, the shortage of emergency child care is simply an indication of "how piecemeal and fragile our child-care system really is."

March 2002