The ABC's of Hiring a Nanny
 Frances Anne Hernan
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2000 Nationwide Printing, Olathe, KS USA
  ISBN: 0966692810

Every young parents' handbook for parenting - a plain language manual with a CD of important forms. Tips & information on parent needs assessments; hiring agencies; interviewing techniques; pertinent state & federal laws; the do's & don'ts of hiring; investigating references & credentials; employer/employee relationships & contracts.

Who is watching your children? Do you really know, whether it's the baby-sitter or the nanny? Are you an educated employer of your children's primary influence -after you? Do you dread the thought of interviewing applicants for the job of being your children's nanny? What questions can you ask & what do the answers mean? Do you have any idea what the government expects of you as an employer? When you realize how unsuitable was your choice, how do you terminate the employment relationship? What really is a nanny?

A quick look at the yellow pages will show that every cleaning service advertised is bonded & insured; strange that we let strangers into our homes to care for our children without such professional liability insurance. That is one symptom of how casual our personal childcare practices have been. Partly because so many of us still operate from the “auntie”, “granny” or “older sister” perception of who will be caring for our precious offspring. Surely if a person lives in, eats with us & joins in in our family life - they become inseparable & thus trustworthy. That is an ideal for which most families search. In their yearning for their own personal Mary Poppins that is not what most families find among the untapped well of the unemployed.

As with good men, most good nannies are already taken & when their time is up in one family, word-of-mouth is enough to ensure they move onto another family. For the rest of us, we've got to dive in & start swimming & The ABC's of Hiring a Nanny is an up-to-date, versatile diving board.

Frances Anne Hernan worked for ten years as a nanny & has five children & nine grandchildren. She knows nannying from the inside out & from both sides of the interviewing table & she brings her experience & knowledge to this book & CD with precise, clear & do-able instructions. Her manual will enlighten you as to what a nanny is not & will support you in what a nanny taking care of your children will be, or else.

The Table of Contents includes(& is not limited to): The Needs Assessment: what you want, need & can afford. Cut and Paste, find a Nanny Post Haste: in which the search, investigation & hiring begins. The Paper Chase offers in detail the what, where & for whom contracts, job descriptions & work agreements are managed. Into the Pool, Don't Drown sets out the interviewing & hiring process; this is where The ABC's of Hiring a Nanny excels!

Money Matters deals with all those government forms with which you will become familiar: FICA, FUTA et al. Resources, Resources is a potpourri that will help you level the playing field with training programs & the many services available to you & your prospective nanny. May they all be Mary Poppinses.

Peppered with old saws such as: “When you don't comply, it's mud in your eye” or “say what you mean & mean what you say,” The ABC's of Hiring a Nanny is eminently useful & should be given at baby showers, as wedding gifts & by prospective grandparents, hint, hint!

Frances Anne Hernan has written this exuberant, acerbic & informative manual to make the job of hiring & firing more palatable, understandable & practised.

Frances Anne Hernan's writing experience includes copy writing, grant writing, speech writing, developing workshops, editing & contributing to newsletters & designing brochures for organizations & political candidates. As a program assistant to government agencies she created Requests for Proposals. She co-authored the Community Development block grant applications for the south End Neighborhood Center in Tacoma, Washington. She also designed a low-income needs assessment for her hometown of Canton, Ohio.

Do check out my lively Interview with the author - you'll learn a lot!
(03/11/01)

Rebecca