Hi, my name is Annemarie and I am the Client Services director for Night Nannies.
I use this blog as a way to give you tips and idea's in all areas of childcare and development.
Posted 01 March 24
Upskilling your household staff and nannies with Platinum Skills
Night Nannies will be collaborating with our colleagues at WGS to continue running our training for Nannies, Household Managers, Housekeepers, Cooks, Groundspersons and any other domestic household staffing.
We find in Australia although the nanny sector has been around for decades and the qualifications are high, the understanding of the skill, presentation and expectation within the household professional career nanny or Manager is lacking. Typically if a candidate has worked overseas and returned then we see a different level of professionalism. However, because of the lack of training in Australia there tends to be a missing step between the career qualified and the career professional.
We are looking forward to continue offering our dedicated high end training to Australian households covering the finer things in life. Preparing your staff to be at their highest level.
Contact us for more information on 1300791663
Posted 05 March 24
Nannies step in as local families hit with long waiting lists at daycare
Newslocal - https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/wentworth-courier/nannies-step-in-as-local-families-hit-with-long-waiting-lists-at-daycare/news-story/8551e7dd1ac9ca585394d10a37416e0f
Wentworth Courier Nannies step in as local families hit with long waiting lists at daycare Long waiting lists at daycare centres are sending more and more families into the welcoming arms of nannies and au pairs. Angela Saurine 6 min read March 5, 2024 - 1:00PM
When Marcus Ritchie and his wife Trudy were looking at childcare options for their son Ashton, they faced a conundrum. With long waiting lists for early education centres in the Bondi area and the high cost of centre-based care, they instead turned to a nanny. A few months later, they made the decision to look for an au pair which, with both parents working full-time, was more financially viable. While the idea of having a stranger move into their spare bedroom to look after Ashton while they were at work may have been daunting at first, Charlotte Piquet – a 21-year-old student from France – quickly became part of the family. “Daycare is around $200 per day and an au pair is a considerably cheaper option,” Marcus says. “They’re more of a student than a full-time nanny. “Initially, it was a concern that it would change the family dynamic because there’s only three of us, but we wanted her to integrate with the family. “We all have dinner together and she has a TV in her bedroom, so she can have her own downtime in there, or watch TV in the family room with us. She does a bit of study during Ashton’s naps and at night and on weekends.
She’s also having surfing lessons, so she’s off on her own adventures and exploring the city.” Finding an au pair that they connected with was important to the couple, so they decided to engage an agency, Au Pair Australia, to help them recruit the right person. They were presented with several options and had a few video meetings with Charlotte to make sure their personalities fit. Marcus works in the finance industry while Trudy works in strategy for a global property fund. Charlotte was completing her business degree in France, with plans to do an MBA. “As part of the course she was doing she needed to improve her English, but I’d give her English nine out of 10,” Marcus says. “There’s always a bit of a risk, but I think you can tell the personality of the au pair quite quickly. We needed to have the same
values. We’re relatively structured, so the au pair needed to be somewhat organised. We thought, ‘she’s organised enough to do a business degree and MBA’, and it’s aligned with what we’ve done.” Another bonus Marcus sees is that Ashton, who turns two in May, hasn’t been sick as often as he may have been had he been in centre-based care. “Ashton is a pretty active young boy and she’s active, so they love going on walks and going to museums, playgrounds, playgroups and to swimming lessons,” he says. While au pairs and nannies have long been employed in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, their popularity has increased in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Australian Nanny Association (ANA) co-founder Annemarie Sansom says three quarters of the organisation’s members have reported an increase in nanny positions since 2020. “Covid really made it boom,” she says. “A lot of people saw the benefit of having a nanny because they didn’t want to or were not able to use centres because they were closed, and they weren’t able to get family to support them. It gave people more insight into what nannies do. From then on, it’s continued to increase. “People are also having children later in life and their parents are not able to give them the support that previous generations might have had. Even though we’re connected through the internet, we don’t have that community that we used to have.” Sansom, from Sydney, co-founded the ANA with a group of other nanny agency owners and nannies in 2012, when government funding of the childcare sector was in the spotlight.
“Even though nannies are really well known in Europe, there was this misconception that they were just babysitters and that’s not what the industry is,” she says. “There are nannies who may have done a preschool teaching degree who feel like they are not on the floor looking after the children at a centre as much as they would like to be because of the paperwork. They want that one-on-one experience working in a home, and they are providing an educational program.” Director of Night Nannies Australia Annemarie Sansom. Picture: Supplied Director of Night Nannies Australia Annemarie Sansom. Picture: Supplied The mother of five, who runs agencies Night Nannies Australia and Day Nannies Australia, worked as a nanny herself in both Sydney and Canada early in her career and says the industry has changed dramatically over the past two decades. “When I was a nanny, it was more like the British nanny system – prim and proper and wealthy families only,” she says. “Now there’s more families in the middle socio-economic bracket employing nannies, and more flexibility.
A lot of the time people working in the city are leaving home early and getting back late because they have meetings and that’s where it’s good to have a nanny. “A lot of parents use a combination – they might use a nanny three days a week and schedule late meetings for those days, and a centre two days a week. “With a nanny you have more flexibility to ring up and say, ‘I’m stuck on the bridge, there’s been an accident’ or ‘my meeting went over time’.” Sansom says parents sometimes request nannies who play a musical instrument such as the piano, or speak a language they would like their children to learn. “That’s definitely something that’s in demand at the moment,” she says. “Often those nannies bring different cultural experiences as well, which is nice.”
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, there were 2148 nannies working in NSW at the time of the 2021 census. “There are definitely more jobs than nannies right now,” Sansom says. “We have quite a lot of jobs on the go at the moment and I know most agencies are the same.” Au Pair Australia founder Miryam Aubert says au pairs are also highly sought after. “I have more families than au pairs because there’s a huge demand, but we are constantly in touch with more agencies in Europe asking to establish agreements with them,” she says. One of the biggest challenges the industry has faced since Covid is the high cost of flights. “Two years ago, you could get return flights from Europe for around $1500, but now it’s almost $3000 for a return trip,” Aubert says. “But the agencies I work with in Europe try to work with candidates who are serious many months in advance.” Originally from Mexico, Aubert also worked as a nanny early in her career in Canada, the UK and Australia. “I thought it was an excellent way to improve my English, make friends and travel to different countries,” she says. She started the business in 2008 to help streamline the process. “When I came to Australia in 2001 there was just a matching website,” she says. “I was finding nice families on the internet, but it was risky if you didn’t have a contract or established working conditions and sometimes families could take advantage of you. There were no agencies to provide support or protection.” The au pairs Aubert sources mostly come from Europe, including France, Germany and Italy, on the Working Holiday Maker visa program. They need to have at least 100 hours experience caring for children and be able to provide references. Aubert then works with partner agencies in Europe to screen them and verify documents such as passports and police checks before presenting candidates to families, and helping organise interviews, contracts and visas. Aubert says cost is the key factor in parents choosing au pairs over centre-based care. “Childcare has always been expensive in Australia,” she says. “I think that is the main reason families look for other options. Their main priority isn’t the cultural exchange, but that’s a plus of course. I think it’s more affordable than paying a nanny but sometimes it’s not that convenient hosting someone in your house that’s a complete stranger, but when they see the positive things, they usually find a balance and say it’s working.”