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Bucks County CourierNanny care isn’t just for the rich anymoreBy JO CIAVAGLIA - Bucks County Courier Times - May 21, 2007
When he realized he’d need to work one upcoming Saturday, Ryan Galardi knew he’d have a small problem: his infant son, Jack.
The Merrill Lynch financial adviser had leftover work to finish at his Blue Bell office. His accountant wife, Kelly, was in the middle of the busy tax season.
The couple’s usual backup baby sitters — the grandparents — were out of town. The daycare center is closed on weekends. He could bring Jack to work, but Galardi doubted he’d get much done.
So Galardi called his other child-care backup — Merrill Lynch. A few days later, the backup care service his company uses found him a nursing student with several years of nanny experience, and clean criminal history and child abuse background checks.
"It was really pretty simple," said Galardi, who lives in Furlong in Central Bucks. "She came out and she was very qualified."
Plus, Merrill Lynch picked up all but $15 of her fee for six hours of care.
Nannies, who were once considered the exclusive domain of the rich and famous, are fast joining the mainstream child-care industry as more parents with busy careers find it an affordable option — and big companies, like Merrill Lynch, offer emergency backup child care as an employee benefit.
Over the last 20 years, the nanny business has boomed in the United States. No hard statistics are available, though industry experts estimate that around 1 million nannies are working in this country.
When Lorna Brawley started working as a nanny in the 1980s, she said there were about 100 agencies. Today, her database alone has more than 500 agencies — and those are only the full-service placement agencies, said Brawley. She’s the founder and president of the National Association of Nanny Care, an industry trade group headquartered in Bethesda, Md.
For many professional working couples, nanny care is no longer considered financially out of reach. Weekly child-care center rates can be $100 or more for each child in some areas, but nannies often take care of more than one child for the same price, Brawley said.
The average, full-time, live-in nanny earned about $650 a week in the Mid-Atlantic region in 2006, according to a salary survey by the International Nanny Association, based in Houston. Part-time, live-in nannies earned $400 a week, the survey said.
"It’s not just for the rich and famous," Brawley said.
New Hope resident Sherry Fitzgerald travels to New York City for an overnight medical treatment once a month. Her mom usually watches the three kids — nearly year-old twins Gracie and Dylan and 5-year-old son Connor.
But one month, her mom wasn’t available and Fitzgerald’s husband, Brendan, a Microsoft executive who had to go to work, had no time to find a replacement. They found an emergency nanny with one call to Microsoft’s human resources department, which has a corporate account with a nanny service.
"It was a huge relief," Fitzgerald said.
Since then, she has used the service once or twice a week, mostly so she can do errands or attend school functions for Connor. Once, she said she called for a nanny at 3 p.m. for the next day and the company found one.
The nanny service Microsoft uses screens employees and lets clients specify the type of caregiver they want. The service updates clients every three hours about the search until a qualified nanny is found. And there’s no long-term commitment. Plus Microsoft, which provides executives 100 hours of nanny care a year, picks up half the fee, she said.
"It was like a godsend," Sherry Fitzgerald added. "More companies should do it."
Niche NanniesNanny care is seen as a step beyond the traditional daycare provider or baby sitter. Nannies are expected to participate in the social, emotional and intellectual development of their charges, including helping with language development, manners and schoolwork.
They’re also considered a household partner who helps with routine chores such as meal preparation and laundry, which is another reason they’re gaining popularity among dual career couples, Brawley said.
The biggest drawback with nanny care is that there’s no minimum certification or credentialing guidelines, Brawley said. Parents hiring nannies on their own must do background checks themselves.
"You don’t even have to be CPR-certified," said Brawley, whose group is developing credentials that would include CPR and first aid certifications and background checks.
Because there are no credentials, more parents are using nanny services because they prescreen potential child-care providers. That service is driving a new trend called niche nannies, who provide customized child care — often with little advance notice.
There are event nannies, who work only on special occasions such as weddings and conventions. Potty problems? There’s a nanny for that. Bedtime bedlam? There’s a nanny to handle that. Rude rugrats? There’s one for that problem, too.
There’s also a traveling nanny, who accompanies families on trips to take care of the children while the parents take care of business or pleasure. The after-school nanny picks up the kids at school; shuttles them to dance class, piano lessons and soccer practice; starts dinner; does a load of laundry. and helps the kids with homework. And there’s the standby nanny, who is essentially an emergency backup nanny in case the regular nanny needs a day off.
"There are agencies and nannies that cover everything," Brawley said. "We fill in all the different gaps in the industry."
Business Boom
Tracy Jackson-Benson owns Premiere Nanny Services of Bucks County, a Warrington-based company offering a variety of temporary child-care services with more than 200 prescreened caregivers available for clients to preview.
Premiere provides prescreened nannies and baby sitters 24/7 and offers nanny training and community outreach programs such as pediatric first aid and CPR classes.
About 18 months ago, Jackson-Benson embarked on one of the latest growing niche areas: corporate account nannies. She said they now make up about 20 percent of her business.
Big companies contract with nanny or backup care services for parents who otherwise would need to take off a day from work to care for a child, spouse or parent. It provides 24/7 on-call childcare services, typically as a perk for front-line staff and top executives.
With one phone call (or computer mouse click) the service forwards several prescreened caregiver prospects to families. The family chooses the person. The employer pays all or part of the fee.
The employee is happy. The company gets a more focused, productive worker. For every dollar invested in backup care, employers can expect a return of $3 to $4 in increased productivity and reduced turnover, according to WFD Consulting, a company that focuses on work-life solutions.
The Work Options Group manages an exclusive network of licensed in-home and center-based care providers nationwide, and partners with agencies like Premiere Nanny Services of Bucks County to provide short-term care.
Over the last several years, Work Options has scheduled more than 1 million hours of backup care, spokeswoman Heather Hope said.
Ninety percent of the care was for children, with the remaining 10 percent for adults such as elderly parents or ill spouses. About 60 percent of the care was provided in-home and the rest was done through contracted child-care centers.
Since 2000, Merrill Lynch has offered part-time and full-time workers an emergency backup care benefit, said Alan Youngblood, a company human resources official. Employees can use up to 20 days a year for the care of a child or an adult.
Youngblood said the company has seen a steady increase in employees using the benefit. In fiscal year 2005-06, the company saw an employee increase of more than 500 hours of backup care. The numbers for previous years were not available.
The company doesn’t have hard data on how the benefit has increased worker productivity, Youngblood said, but employee feedback has been "incredibly positive." He said workers report that the benefit made the difference between coming to work and calling out. They also said they were able to focus more in their work, knowing that the care was in place at home.
"From that perspective, it’s very, very well received," he added. "We’ve found it to be very effective."
Employees like Galardi certainly think so.
Had the benefit not been there that Saturday, he said he wouldn’t have been able to go to work.
"It was great. I was very happy with the service," he said. "It’s comforting to know it’s there."
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