Parents seeking childcare have a range of options and employing a nanny is just one. It should be part of your professional skills - and not just a personal bias - that you are able to promote the nannying option with all the benefits, calling on strong sources of support to make your points. You can make a good case for employing a nanny without criticising other parts of the early years services in an unprofessional manner.
THEPersonal TOUCH The significant benefit that you offer as a nanny is that your time is committed to this family, or to two families if you are in a nanny-share.
This exclusive personal relationship is the defining part of the nanny option. If need be, blow your own professional trumpet on this point.
Explain that part of the pleasure you find in the job is that you get to know children well as individuals and you are able to tailor their days to what really interests them. Get across at the interview stage that you fully understand the responsibilities of working in somebody else's home.
Show that you respect the ground rules but will not sit around waiting to be told what to do. You are full of good ideas yourself that will support the children of this family to develop safely and to be enthusiastic young learners.
In a day nursery, good practice offers a friendly personal relationship to parents of the children there, but staff time is more shared out between families. As many readers will know, the close personal and working relationship in nannying can be both an attraction of the job, and a serious downside, if your employer behaves in a difficult way over conditions and expectations.
A family may be aware that the advantage of having your exclusive services comes with the disadvantage that, if you are ill, there are no other members of staff to step into the gap. So be ready to reassure a family that you always behave responsibly, especially if their previous nanny was given to telephoning in the morning, rather than the evening before, to say she was too ill to come in that day.
Families vary and some may want to be reassured that you do not plan to leave after a short time. The parents may be very well aware of the importance of continuity for their own sense of wellbeing, as well as their children's happiness. Of course, you should not make promises you cannot keep. It would be dishonest and unprofessional to take a job with such a family and fail to let them know that you are planning only a short-term stay.
However, parents may suggest, perhaps at your interview, that a nursery would keep more of an emotional distance and 'not get too attached' to their child. Comments of this kind let you know that these parents experience a struggle in sharing their child's affection. You need to reassure them that you are committed to the children for whom you take responsibility, and you will get close, but you will remain clear who their parents are and who they have the strongest bond with.
You can also challenge, in a courteous way, anyone's image of nursery practice. A good nursery manager will not allow staff to distance themselves from children. There will be a keyperson system, and children will be allowed to get close and feel affection for staff members. You might be able to speak authoritatively from working in a nursery yourself, or refer to what you know from reading and from early years colleagues, about what good nursery practice is.
Home learning
In promoting any case you can draw on research into how young children develop, including early brain development. (See the suggestions at the end of this feature.) You can acknowledge, as a fellow professional, that good nursery practice will support children. But feel free to point out to parents, since your salary may well be an issue, that genuinely good day nurseries do not come cheap. Bad nurseries will distress children and could cause them long-term emotional and intellectual damage.
Young children learn best by being supported by adults, and suitable play resources, so that they can extend their learning in a flexible way.
Children under five or six years do not benefit from a structured school-type day, and they need plenty of individual times, rather than being lost in a larger group. The EPPE research project identified that children in early years group settings benefited most from staff who made a warm relationship and saw clearly that emotional development went hand-in-hand with cognitive progress. The most effective settings, from the perspective of children's progress, were those organised to give plenty of time for child-initiated activities and for one-to-one conversations that followed children's interests. But you can point out that as a nanny, you are already well placed to offer this positive blend of personal caring and early learning.
JOINING THE CLUB
What about when children do attend nursery? You may work as a nanny for a family where some of the children attend a nursery or playgroup for certain hours of the week, and indeed some children may be in full-time school.
Children younger than school-age can enjoy and benefit from the learning resources and social opportunities in a good early years setting. You may need to show your employer, or potential employing family, that the group experience is complementary to what you have to offer, rather than in competition with it.
Your skills and input are not suddenly redundant because children attend a nursery class or pre-school. The EPPE research identified that the more effective settings contributed to children's progress - but it did not say that group settings were better than home. If you look at the report, you will see the EPPE team admit honestly that it was not possible to make that kind of comparison. The research also identified that many parents were making a direct contribution to their children's progress through the sort of home-based activities and experiences that you would provide as a nanny.
Just because young children join a nursery or playgroup does not mean that all their progress can now be credited to the work of that staff team. Of course, young children continue to benefit from your conversation, the enjoyment of books or the pleasure of cooking together.
When the children start to attend school, the pressure about your salary may increase for the family. Note how the Government's current childcare initiatives are all about using the spare capacity of schools to provide 'wraparound care' that fits with an adult working day.
A good after-school club or a friendly breakfast club suits some children and some families, but not everyone. Many children would prefer to be in their own living room and to be able to invite friends back for tea if they fancy some company. Given a genuine choice, a lot of school-age children do not want to be somewhere other than their own home for most of their waking hours for many weeks of the year. If need be, you can again remind parents that good quality facilities with professional staff and suitable resources will not come cheap. If children attend poorly-run or poorly-resourced schemes, they can become bored, unhappy or at risk of accidents.
Nannies have to make their own financial decisions. Reflect on how far you are willing to adjust your job responsibilities. If you have several hours each day in term time without children to supervise, then it would help if you show willing to discuss options with the family. It is quite professional to decline being converted into a cleaner. But would you be happy to do some batch cooking for the family, do you like gardening or could you help out in an agreed way with the family business? Having a proper discussion with your employers can result in an interim agreement and a date when you and the family will review any new way of organising your week. It should also be understood that these are term-time arrangements; your commitment returns full-time to the children after you pick them up from school and throughout the school holidays.
Evidence for support
* Early Education's Learning Together series of free leaflets, available on tel: 020 7539 5400 or www.early-education.org.uk
* Zero To Three, a useful US website with plenty about child development, including early brain research, at www.zerotothree.org
* Healy, Jane, Your child's growing mind: a practical guide to brain development and learning from birth to adolescence (New York: Doubleday, 1994)
* EPPE:The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education project, at www.ioe.ac.uk/schools/ecpe/eppe
