Whether you’re looking for a babysitter for routine childcare or the occasional date nights, a reference and interview process for gathering information on your potential babysitter can help to determine the right sitter for your family. As an additional step, a comprehensive and thorough background check service like Check People can help to ease your worries about leaving your children with a childcare provider. This article shares our top tips for finding a qualified and trustworthy babysitter for your family.
References from friends and family
Some of the most vital background research you can do on a potential babysitter is reviews from friends, family, and trusted acquaintances. These individuals in your life can provide authentic and insightful information on babysitters, including experiences with the babysitter, rates, and potentially negative feedback. This type of feedback is valuable for babysitters who are underage and won’t have thorough information available on a background check service.
Conducting an interview with potential babysitters
After you have found a selection of potential babysitters, we recommend an informal interview with you and your children to determine if this individual is a good fit for your family dynamic and babysitter needs. We recommend keeping this interview light and conversational all while giving the potential babysitter the chance to interact with your children to determine if they are a good fit for your family.
If your potential babysitter is underage, it might be a good idea for your interview to include their parents as well. This is good practice to establish trust between you and their parents. There are a number of factors to consider when hiring a teenage babysitter, including appropriate hours, pick up and drop off, and reasonable expectations of responsibilities.
Some great questions to use in your interview include:
- What is their babysitting experience?
- Do they have up-to-date CPR or first aid certifications?
- What is their hourly rate?
- Are they available to babysit late or overnight?
- Do they have a car, a clean driving record, and a valid driver’s license?
Run a thorough background check online
Online background checkers like CheckPeople.com are fast, easy, and stress-free search services available to the general public. These cost-effective services can provide insightful information on potential babysitters such as criminal reports, civil reports, financial records, lawsuits, traffic reports, and sex offender status. This type of online records check is easy to use, and reports can often be generated using only a candidate’s first and last name.
All background checks and people searches through services such as CheckPeople.com are confidential, so you can rest assured that your potential candidates will never know that you accessed their background check information. These services use secure information from secure and verifiable sources like government databases, corporation records, social media, and general web searches.
While consent is not necessary to conduct a background check on a potential babysitter, we do recommend asking their permission before doing so. The question in itself can be very telling – if a potential babysitter is reluctant to disclose information that may be available via a background search, this should give you pause about their appropriateness to babysit your children.
It is important to note that background check services like CheckPeople.com are most effective when the person you are searching for is over 18. For babysitters who are under 18 years old, this type of service will provide minimal, if any, results. This is because information on underage minors is either not applicable (in the case of financial information) or not publicly accessible (like criminal records or court records, etc.). We recommend checking your local labor regulations, like these from the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, to ensure you are following the proper protocols.
Conclusion
We hope you feel empowered to find a trustworthy and qualified babysitter for your family with these helpful tips! By arming yourself with the most accurate information available via a comprehensive background check, you can rest easy, responsible, and well-vetted.
